The 15th edition of Elsevier magazine's higher education-themed supplement Elsevier Thema Studeren is out, with listings of popular and best-voted study programmes in the Netherlands as rated by students, professors and senior university lecturers. Four University of Amsterdam (UvA) Bachelor's programmes received professors' and senior university lecturers' vote as the best in the country. These are: Dentistry, Communication Science, Cultural Anthropology & Development Sociology and Psychology.

The UvA stays at last year's third place in the overall professor ratings of research universities, earning 12% of votes (Utrecht University tops the list).

On the whole, student ratings of programmes offered at the Dutch universities show little divergence. Study programmes at the UvA all scored good or - in most cases - excellent. The lowest-scoring UvA programme is Dentistry, with a score of 6.2; the highest, with an 8.2, is Mathematics. Master's programmes all earned high marks at the UvA, and the three Research Master's programmes measured in the assessment did well with scores of 7.5 for Language and Culture, 7.9 for Physics and 8.1 for Behaviour and Society.

Assessment criteria

The survey assessing Bachelor's programmes presented students with a total of 37 questions, classified into six categories: facilities, design of the programme, teaching, lecturers, learning assessments, organisational structure and communication. Master's students were posed 36 questions, split into three categories: education content, design of the programme, labour-marked preparation and lecturers. Students assessing the Research Master's programmes answered 33 questions examining the scientific content, curriculum and supervision, and quality of lecturers.

Professors and senior university lecturers assessed study programmes in their own disciplines in respect of four criteria: quality of the Bachelor's programme, range of Master's programmes, quality of lecturers and quality of scientific publications by staff.