Wittenborg Concerned about the Promotion of Holland's Binary Education System in China
Wittenborg Concerned about the Promotion of Holland's Binary Education System in China
Wittenborg Concerned about the Promotion of Holland's Binary Education System in China
Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences has expressed concern about a possible bias against the promotion of Dutch universities of applied sciences in China.
For the second year in a row, Wittenborg has not received any incoming students from China through the Orange Tulip Scholarship (OTS), managed by the Netherlands Education Support Offices (Neso) in different countries. This is in stark contrast with other Neso-countries like Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico and Korea from which it did receive OTS applications.
Dutch higher education has a binary system, which means that you can choose between two types of education: research-orientated education offered by research universities, and higher professional education offered by universities of applied sciences such as Wittenborg.
Nesos are run under the auspices of Nuffic - the Dutch agency for internationalisation in higher education. Wittenborg has contacted Nuffic for comment.
Wittenborg’s chair of the executive board, Peter Birdsall, has said he will be traveling to Beijing in two weeks and plans to discuss the matter with Neso China during his visit.
Just two weeks ago Wittenborg’s CEO, Maggie Feng, was part of a trade mission to China where she made cooperation agreements with at least 5 institutes of higher education, including Shanghai University of Sport, one of the top sport institutes in China.
By way of explaining the lack of applications from China, the OTS Programme Coordinator of Neso China, Yusi Chen, has said the Chinese market places a lot of emphasis on rankings, so only certain research universities are “relevant”.
She also went on to thank Wittenborg for sponsoring the Neso China OTS programme.
WUP 15/04/2017
by Anesca Smith
©WUAS Press
292 words