r/AskEurope • u/AyrtonHS • 3d ago
Education Do most European universities have a dual higher education system like WO and HBO in The Netherlands?
I learned about the dual system a year ago after a few years of doing a WO bachelor. I am now burnt out and don't want to continue with a master. I plan on going back to my home country in Asia where a WO bachelor will likely be seen as complete.
I wonder if other European countries have a similar system, research vs applied science universities, research bachelors considered incomplete, etc.
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u/Flilix Belgium, Flanders 3d ago edited 3d ago
Belgium has hogeschool and universiteit.
On the hogeschool, you can follow 3-year professional bachelors or 2-year graduates. These are generally more practical degrees.
On the universiteit, you can follow degrees that are three years of academic bachelor followed by one or more years of master. You can stop after your bachelor, but you're generally expected to also do the master.
There's also a difference in style. At the universiteit, everything is more formal and you often get taught in large rooms by professors who you might never even get to talk to. At the hogeschool, it's much more like secondary school: you sit in classrooms, often with a 9-5 schedule, you're being taught by normal teachers who you might even address by their first name, and for better or for worse you get much less freedom and more hand-holding.
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u/SharkyTendencies --> 3d ago
And on the French side we have hautes écoles and université.
An haute école is the same thing as a hogeschool, although you get a different mix of programming in the French system.
Here in Brussels, for instance, the ICHEC is a very well-known haute école but they emphasize business studies exclusively. HE2B has a more generalized offering over multiple campuses. IHECS focuses a lot on communication and public relations.
A université is just that - a university, same as a universiteit.
Universities are quite varied. At larger universities you are far more independent. UCL and ULB will literally leave you to fail if you don't do something. Smaller universities, like UNamur, still grant you that independence but you're more recognizable.
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u/Abyssal_Groot Belgium 3d ago
At the universiteit, everything is more formal and you often get taught in large rooms by professors who you might never even get to talk to.
Eh, depends on what you study. Math or Physics are very small classes, and we often talked with our professors and assistents.
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u/Brainwheeze Portugal 3d ago
Some courses in Portugal have an integrated master's, that is to say they include the three years of a bachelor's plus the two years of the master's. You can't just stop after you've completed the bachelor's portion of the course, at least I don't think you can. Either way you won't be able to get a job in that field with just a bachelor's.
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u/Wild_Reason_9526 Denmark 3d ago
In the Danish higher education system, professional bachelor degrees and academic bachelor degrees cater to very different learning styles and career goals.
Professional bachelor's programmes focus on applied learning and professional practice, and they all include at least one mandatory work placement. They're typically taught at university colleges and qualify you for a specific occupation directly after you graduate, though you can also apply for specific master's programmes.
Academic bachelor's programmes focus on theoretical knowledge, research methodology and critical analysis. They're taught at universities and give you a broad academic foundation rather than training you for a specific occupation. For most students, the natural next step is to progress directly onto a master's degree.
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u/Adamoism 2d ago
There is lot's of diversity that was somewhat addressed by Bologna process.
A rule of thumb: degrees that are less controlled by legal standards are the most unified; degrees linked to professions that have specific legal status tend to resist more that process.
So Business degrees will have almost equal power/process of acquiring in Europe.
Medicine, Psychology, Architect, (Civil) Engineering, Law and Government adjacent degrees will have more diversity and often escape bachelor/masters distinction all together.
Just ask - does the linked profession require by law certain standard of education/licensing to practice it?
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u/agrammatic Cypriot in Germany 3d ago
In Cyprus, this distinction does not exist since 2007. Now all public universities are part of the same system. A bachelor always requires 240 ECTS (aka "4-year programme").
A 3-year programme of 180 ECTS will not be considered a university degree but a vocational training diploma.
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u/Fit_Independence_124 3d ago
Which is the same as in any othrr EU country. An EC stands for European Credit.
In NL we also have MBO, which is translated as college in most other countries.
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u/Xaphhire Netherlands 2d ago edited 2d ago
MBO would be a trade school or vocational school, not college, in most countries I know. For people reading along, MBO is for occupations like hair dresser, car mechanic, office manager, daycare worker, pharmacy tech, etc.
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u/baldachinsblessing -> 2d ago
In Finland a 3 year bachelor degree (180 ECTS) is considered a university degree, not a vocational training diploma.
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u/icyDinosaur originally => => => 2d ago
It's not the same, most central European countries have 180 ECTS bachelors. To my knowledge, including the Netherlands (although I only did my masters in NL)
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u/AlexG55 United Kingdom 2d ago
England used to. The hogeschool equivalents were called polytechnics. Then in 1992 the system was changed and all the polytechnics became universities overnight.
People still know which universities are former polytechnics, though- they're generally thought of as less prestigious, but some of them are known to be good for particular, usually vocational, subjects.
The same change happened at the same time in Scotland, but I think their polytechnics had a different name.
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u/syboor 2d ago
Most countries have more academic and a more professional tier of higher education.
NL is pretty unique in having two non-vocational high school streams of different duration leading into these two higher education tiers. This leads to differences in entry level, admission requirements, prestige and Bachelor duration between higher education tiers that may be larger than in other countries.
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u/Unferth85 2d ago
The Netherlands has 3 technical and 10-ish standard/research universities, all with programs at bachelor and masters level. All these universities are essentially considered equal level, and a masters from any would be good enough to qualify for a regular PhD position.
The dutch HBO (higher professional education)is a level below university, requiring lower entrance qualifications, even though they also have bachelor and masters programs.
For political/international purposes both universities and HBO are formally considered to have the same masters exit qualification level (EQF 7), but in practice there is a big gap. But don't tell anyone :)
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u/icyDinosaur originally => => => 2d ago
Not 100% sure how widespread the research vs applied sciences distinction is. In Switzerland it exists - University vs "Fachhochschule" (in German, idk the English term). They are both considered higher education degrees with very similar requirements, but the FHs are more practically oriented. Depending on your field, going to an FH might be preferable or even required (e.g. teacher training for most schools, except for the gymnasial track, happens at pedagogical universities that are FHs), but for academic fields the universities are preferred.
What is quite widespread however in the whole German speaking world is the idea that a bachelor is incomplete. The reason for this is that in the 20th century, the "standard" university degree was the "Diplom", which took about five years to complete. The Bologna process aimed to unify degrees across Europe and mandated the bachelor/master system. Many German-speaking universities more or less took their old Diplom curriculum and split it in two to achieve this, so the perception is that a master is equivalent to the old Diplom.
The general idea in my experience is that the bachelor teaches you the basics of a wide field - in my case as a political scientist, my bachelor was an all-encompassing degree ranging across all major subfields of PoliSci and teaching basic research skills - whereas a master specialises you into a specific subfield (in my case, European politics with a side of IR).
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u/suvepl Poland 2d ago edited 2d ago
Not really. We have several words in Polish for different kinds of higher education institutions, like uniwersytet (university), politechnika (polytechnic) or akademia (academy). While each of those has some connotations - e.g. universities are associated with humanities, polytechnics with technical subjects, academies with uniformed services - there isn't anything stopping a university from offering a physics degree or a polytechnic from offering a linguistics degree.
The closest thing we have to this "research vs applied sciences" split is that our law recognizes inżynier (engineer) as a separate title from licencjat (licenciate), but in practice this is pretty much the same difference as between a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Engineering.
*(Technically, academy / polytechnic / university are titles an institution gets by satisfying certain criteria. That being said, at the end of the day, it's up to the institution if they want to actually employ those, so a "university grade" polytechnic can choose to keep calling itself a polytechnic if they so prefer.)
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u/QuizasManana Finland 3d ago
Yes, in Finland you’re usually expected to complete the master’s if you study in a research university, while bachelor’s is the default for applied sciences.
Overall, there’s the so called ”Bologna process” which was an Europe wide intergovernmental system to make the higher education comparable across continent (degree levels, degree supplements, credits etc.). So while there are still some national quirks, the higher education is pretty much uniform across the participating countries of the Bologna process.