Photo Luuk Zegers
The University Guide gives the accolade ‘top degree programme’ to 16 of the 19 Wageningen Bachelor’s programmes. Last year, only 13 programmes got this honour. These are some of the results in the 2024 University Guide (Keuzegids universiteiten 2024), which was published on Thursday 30 November.
The University Guide gives universities and their Bachelor’s programmes scores out of 100. The degree programmes are assessed using data from the National Student Survey, labour market figures published by ROA and degree success rates from the Dutch universities association UNL.
Ten Wageningen Bachelor’s programmes got a higher score than last year, while nine saw a fall. The biggest climbers are Communications & Life Sciences (+17) and Tourism (+14) . Health & Society (-8) and Forest & Nature Conservation (-7) saw the biggest drops. The reasons for these changes vary per programme; it could for example be to do with the number of students progressing to the second year of the programme, or how quickly students graduate. The new Marine Sciences Bachelor’s didn’t get assessed.
Overall, Wageningen gets a score of 70, 1.5 points less than last year. The Open University of the Netherlands, which is a lot smaller than WU (it only has seven assessed Bachelor’s programmes), scored 68.5 this year. Which means the gap between the first place and second place has become a lot smaller, as the University Guide points out. With 65 points, Utrecht University scored top among the generalist universities (which, in addition to Utrecht, are Nijmegen, Leiden, Groningen, VU University Amsterdam and University of Amsterdam).
Bachelor’s programmes in the University Guide, for 2024 and 2023
Agrotechnology 78 – 77
Animal Sciences 67 – 63
Management, Economics & Consumer Studies 78 – 80
Biology 80 – 77
Biotechnology 79 – 83
Forest & Nature Conservation 82 – 89
Communications & Life Sciences 77 – 60
Economics & Policy 75 – 71
Environmental Sciences 76 – 77
Food Technology 76 – 80
Health & Society 69 – 77
International Land & Water Management 83 – 86
International Development Studies 79 – 71
Landscape Architecture & Spatial Planning 77 – 71
