Next year's (4)

The Utrecht University Council (Utrecht Universiteitraad or U-raad) has a website or so I found. Interestingly enough, the Internationalization workgroup has 2 objectives. One is to bring more international students into the English speaking programmes. The second is to figure out how to give them proper representation in the council and other similar entities. This is great.

To attract more international student is not an easy thing. I heard of UU thanks to the European Masters in Language and Speech, UiLots and other little things, like the Academic Ranking of World Universities. I spend numerous hours looking for European universities and LST Master programmes. Even though the CAI masters is sort of brand new, UU was my first choice because it's the Dutch university I heard the most of, the program being the second reason since other universities had very similar programmes (almost the exact same course choice). (ah... Amsterdam might more fun tho')

What the uni definitely needs is more English media, all the pages that could be read by an (potential) international student should be in both Dutch and English. Then I also think the university should make the international experience easier. By that I mean, finding a place to live your first semester/year should be beyond easy. Right now, the ways to find a place are just excrutiatingly painful, the SSHU has a 18 months waiting list. You need to be in Utrecht to sign up for the SJHU. All the websites with classifieds related to housing in the netherlands are in Dutch --- WoningNet, Kamernet, StudentenKamers. An English-speaking one would be a great relief for internationals.

Life on campus should be different. I don't think there is a head student organisation. Each faculty might have it's own student association/organisation and then there's the council. But it doesn't seem the students have organized themselves that much. Even if we consider ESN, the only international oriented organisation with an English website, there is no organisation run for and by the internationals. (I hope I'm not beeing ungrateful by saying that.) It seems the problem is tricky, since The international are either in the UCU (with proper student run organisations), exchange students for short period of time, or at the Master/PhD level, where they either don't have the time, or won't be there long enough to get involved in student councils and organisations.

Is there a student paper in English? A good start would be an couple of page in the Ublad.

I wonder how many internationals there are in total at UU (including UCU with about 600).