Photo: Marte Hofsteenge
In the academic year of 2016-2017, there are 10,697 students registered at Wageningen, according to figures from the Universities Association VSNU. That is 1300 more than at the Technical University of Twente (9396).
Wageningen still has the smallest intake of Bachelor’s students, but its intake of Master’s students is high. This academic year, 1512 first-years came to Wageningen for a BSc, as opposed to 1963 to Twente and 2247 to Eindhoven. But while these technical universities get a few hundred first-year Master’s students, more than 1000 new MSc students come to Wageningen.
Spokesperson Simon Vink knew last year that the university was no longer the smallest, but he did not publicize the fact. ‘It’s not an issue for the board because it carries no consequences.’ Wageningen University is now comparable with the technical universities in Twente and Eindhoven, claims Vink. ‘The budgets of those universities are roughly the same as ours, at about 320 million euros, and our student-staff ratio is roughly the same as those of Eindhoven and Twente too. Only the amount of government funding Wageningen gets is clearly lower, so the government should do something about that.’