At university everything revolves about studying and preparing students for their future careers, but one thing that is still missing is a focus on international students and their employability in the Dutch labour market.
UReka aims to provide opportunities for all students to be able to work in the Netherlands after graduating.International students should be enabled to integrate themselves in the Dutch society after finishing their academic career and not being restricted by language and cultural barriers.
Alina
Hamza
Hamza Riaz (faction 19/20) and Alina Ritter (faction 20/21) haven taken on the challenge and formed a work at the UT.In September 2019, they exercised their right of initiative and proposed an idea to offer a minor course of 15 EC that focuses on Dutch language and corporate culture to the Executive Board as they noticed that many international students have the desire to learn Dutch and stay in the Netherlands however, it is very challenging for them to learn the language while following full-time studies.
In June 2020, the Executive Board committed to focus more on improving the employability of international students but were not sure if offering a minor course is the best way to do so. Since October 2021, a UT project team composed of employees, alumni and Alina and Hamza from UReka have been working exclusively on the topic of ‘Employability of International Students’.
The minor:
As a project team, we are currently determining the feasibility of offering a minor/elective course that focuses on Dutch corporate culture and language to help boost the employability of international students and improve their stay-rate in the Netherlands. For BSc students, the proposal is to offer an elective minor course of 15 EC. For MSc students, the proposal is to allow students to take up elective courses on this topic up to a certain number of ECs. For PhD students, the proposal is to allow them to take up elective courses on this topic as part of their Personal Development Plan (PDP).
Now it is your turn to support them and the project. Through this survey, the aim is to determine the need and feasibility of offering international students (including PhD students) an opportunity to learn about Dutch corporate culture and language while they are not following full-time study courses and how it could potentially improve their employability in The Netherlands.
Share your opinion with them by filling in the survey and feel free to share it with your fellow students. You can make change happen!
