Top of the pack? Money back!
15 Dec 2009
Maastricht University Chinese top student Feng Changjin received her tuition fees back on 10 December
A group of 260 students from Maastricht University will receive their Top 3% certificate on 10 December during a ceremony held in celebration of this achievement at the Theater aan het Vrijthof. The top 3% of students will be eligible for a grant that is equal to the tuition fees they have paid.
This pioneering scheme began last year and is being implemented in stages, meaning that this year it is being introduced for the first- and second-year groups. Fifty students will be awarded the certificate for the second time this year. If they manage to be among the top 3% every year, it will be possible for them to complete their entire degrees ‘free of charge’ – that is, with full reimbursement of their tuition fees.
The 258 recipients reflect the university’s international student population. The majority come from Germany (117), the Netherlands (113) and Belgium (13), with the rest hailing from Austria, the UK, Bulgaria, China, Estonia, Indonesia, Ireland, Kenya, Macedonia, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Romania and Turkey.
The Top 3% scheme is a concrete manifestation of UM’s policy to attract, encourage, cherish and reward talented students. Maastricht University plays a pioneering role in national and international higher education in the fields of talent development, promotion of educational performance and high-quality education. The latter partly depends on the combination of education of a high standard and motivated, talented students. The 3% scheme is one measure to attract talented students from the Netherlands and elsewhere, which in turn favourably affects other students, as student interaction plays a key role in UM’s Problem-Based Learning (PBL) methodology. The other students therefore benefit directly from the presence of talented students, and the quality of education receives additional impetus.
The scheme shows that Maastricht University is genuinely prepared to invest in talent development and educational quality. This is important, especially in a country that is making an active effort to develop an internationally recognised knowledge economy, while at the same time having to contend with what is known as a zesjesmentaliteit (a ‘scraping-through mentality’ where students seem content to settle with a 6/10).
The top 3% of students are selected per faculty, each of which formulate their own selection criteria on the basis of a number of university-wide conditions. Students can compete for the prize every year, on the condition that they continue their studies at UM in the following academic year. This does not, of course, apply to students who have taken a one-year master's programme; they will be reimbursed for the same amount in the form of a prize.