The Wittenborg OnCampus Pathway Programme

08.11.2024

Partnership with Cambridge Education Group Offers Students More Educational Opportunities

Over the past 15 years, several organisations — including Cambridge Education Group — have collaborated with Dutch research universities to provide 'pathway' programmes. These programmes allow students who are not yet qualified to enter university to enhance their 11 years of high school education.

This model has come under increasing pressure in recent years, and the Dutch Ministry of Education has now indicated that it does not wish for this type of preparatory year to continue.

In the Dutch binary system, there is a clear solution to the concept of a pathway programme: the first year of a four-year degree programme at a university of applied sciences. This first year (60 European Credits) leads to a 'propedeuse' diploma. At this stage in the Dutch higher education system, students at a university of applied sciences are entitled to apply for a degree programme at a research university.

Taking the above aspects into account, Wittenborg University of Applied Sciences has teamed up with Cambridge Education Group, who operate OnCampus Amsterdam, to offer the first 60 credits of the Wittenborg Bachelor of Business Administration programme at the OnCampus location in Amsterdam.

Students will be registered as regular bachelor’s students at Wittenborg and will follow a bespoke, broader version of the bachelor’s programme. The benefits for the students are as follows:

Legal Registration: Students are legally registered on a bachelor’s programme at a Dutch higher education institution, and as long as they obtain their credits, they are guaranteed the ability to continue their studies at Wittenborg.

Proximity to Research Universities: Students will remain in an environment close to a research university to which they can apply once they have successfully completed the first 60 European Credits. This choice is available to the students.

Comprehensive Support: Students will have access to all the support mechanisms and student services provided by Wittenborg, just like all other Wittenborg students. In addition, they will benefit from the student support services of OnCampus, which has a long and proven history of providing education.

Overall, through this method, students will be better protected, have more options, and gain a greater sense of security. Although this programme is geared towards preparing students to possibly enter the University of Amsterdam Business School, there is no restriction preventing students from applying to other research universities if they so wish.

The clear benefit for the University of Amsterdam — which until now registered the students as preparatory students — is that there is no ambiguity regarding the status of the pathway programme student.

The bespoke programme in Amsterdam will take Wittenborg’s bachelor’s programme back to its roots, when modules were larger and spanned longer periods. The 60 credits will be divided over six modules of 10 credits each, covering the essentials of the first-year bachelor’s curriculum. Final qualifications, aims, and objectives will always remain in line with the main programme, and although the structure will be different, the content remains the same.

In the longer term, Wittenborg plans to develop a full three-year Bachelor of Science programme on top of this pathway programme, allowing students to continue their studies in the same structural format in which they started.

Wittenborg looks forward to working with Cambridge Education Group, which has a global outreach into international student markets where Wittenborg is less prominent. The programme is open to students from around the world.