ALE. M

Review of Hanze Magazine

WORST UNIVERSITY IN THE NETHERLANDS

WORST UNIVERSITY IN THE NETHERLANDS
I agreed to pay this university in exchange for education and courses, in order to learn something relevant to my professional career. I have paid and been through a whole year and I concluded that I have learned next to nothing relevant throughout the year. I believe that they have not fulfilled their end of this agreement and they have wasted my money, time and mental well being.

The attitude of superiority that some teachers adopt when talking to students. Some teachers treat their students disrespectfully, like children.
A large quantity of assignments and exams that students lack the knowledge to complete. There is too much information crammed in a single block with no regard to the student s capacity to digest this information.
High expectations in regard to the student s prior knowledge, expectations which are not disclaimed beforehand. The information was aimed at people with prior experience in programming from the very start, those with no prior experience had to spend a lot of time catching up, time which was taken from other courses or assignments. In the second block they had to offer extra programming courses because a lot of students did not pass the programming exam.
Poor overall organization and lack of information for students. A good example of this is the brochure we received during the introduction week. This brochure stated that students have the option to choose from three majors in the second year (Visual Design, Game Design, Interaction Design). This was a case of misinformation because only the Game Design major is available in English. This was only stated in the English version of the University s website. The Brochure was fully in English and it did not mention the above stated fact.
Teachers are inexperienced and unprofessional and some of them lack English language expertise. For some courses it is possible to get a Missed Opportunity for simple grammar mistakes. This would be completely normal if the university itself would respect these criteria. They do not, course slides are sometimes poorly translated with grammar mistakes and some are combined with Dutch sentences/words this applies for e-mails that students receive as well.
As stated above, some courses have way too much information which is presented in a sub-optimal way and it is hard to understand, digest and remember.
Most students are treated as numbers , and this is the case because the university accepts anyone that applies and later on they start systematically failing students. To quote one of our teachers, any idiot can come study here .
In some courses, the teachers go through the slides and then suggest that we watch YouTube tutorials. I have a problem with this for two reasons: firstly, I am not paying this amount of money to be told to watch tutorials and secondly, I taught two of my classmates how to use Adobe Illustrator (knowledge which I had before coming to this University) close to the deadline. Both of them said that the courses were uninformative and not educational.
We are required to purchase materials for almost every module, we do receive student discounts but given the fact that some materials are used for a very short time and then never touched again, I find this counterproductive.
Some teachers miss courses and they are usually not rescheduled. The best example of this is our business course, where our teacher was absent for multiple weeks due to health issues and the courses were not held.
It is not easy at all to achieve a passing grade. There is a very large amount of expectations that we are supposed to meet, and this would not be a problem if the overall education that we received was not sub-par. Most students receive Missed Opportunities from the very beginning of the year because of this dress code and referencing system.
I have talked to my classmates and most of them have said that they feel the same way as I do, disappointed and unmotivated.
UPDATE: They didn't contact me yet and nothing has been done about my situation. Pathetic!