Background
Curriculum: the world
The Humanities departments have pooled their available knowledge to create a new course, which has attracted over 350 students from all over the world - to Campus The Hague to be precise. “Leiden seemed to be a nice town during the introduction week, but it’s probably not like that every week, is it?”
Marleen van Wesel
Thursday 24 January 2013

“In late 2009, when Leiden University was in financial straits, a group of Leiden deans led by Willem te Beest, the Executive Board’s Vice President, got together”, explains Wim van den Doel, himself the Dean of the Humanities faculty. “We wanted to raise the number of students, or at least, increase Leiden University’s market share in the Netherlands. There had been several years of decline and we thought a new curriculum would appeal to new students. “International Studies, based on the Humanities, was proposed – it’s a course that is already common in Great Britain and the United States. Van den Doel adds: “Leiden University already had a lot of expertise about ‘the world’; we only needed to pool it.”

Immediately, 377 students enrolled in the first year. “Obviously, we wanted it to succeed, but we didn’t know beforehand whether we could attract that many. We were aiming for over 200 students, although we thought broader programmes were becoming more popular”, says Van den Doel, who is also now the Chairman of the Degree Programme Committee. Johannes Magliano-Tromp, who previously worked for the Leiden University Institute of Religious Studies, was appointed the programme coordinator. “Elements from that department have been incorporated into the programme too, because all the Humanities institutes are contributing to it”, explains Magliano-Tromp. 355 and 340 students sat the most recent exams – he’s not too worried about these figures. “Besides, the percentage of unsatisfactory marks was around ten to fifteen per cent.” The programme is given in English, which, in his opinion, is another success factor, added to the programme’s breadth. “Our campaign to attract students was unusual too: we launched an international Google campaign, and, at a very early stage, we added an active Facebook group to it for anyone who interested. Consequently, a group had already formed before we had even started – an essential condition for the success of any course.”

Richard Griffiths, the spiritual father of International Studies and now student coordinator and lecturer, also thought so, which is why, during the previous academic year, he planned to set up a fraternity with a group of students who had applied early. The Committee was finally elected in September 2012 at an election party. Greg Mason (19) from England had a few beers and then took the stage to give a speech, promising his fellow students parties, discounts and jobs. He is now the president of B.A.S.I.S, a student fraternity. “And now I have to keep those promises. And more than that: we organise sporting events, a winter sports holiday and city breaks. And we’ll be taking on the extra lectures, which are currently organised by the department, very soon.”

Fellow member of the committee, Brice Jacquemin (18), the secretary, feels at home in the international company which the Humanities faculty convinced to come to The Hague. He was born in Belgium but has lived in China, Tanzania, England and Russia. “Most European countries are represented by my fellow students, and together, we’re taking over The Hague now. IS students populate entire blocks of studios in the centre of the city. After this, I want to go to western America or South East Asia. I still haven’t explored that part of the world yet.” The students get around.  “We don’t go to Leiden, though. Leiden seemed to be a nice town during the EL CID week, but it’s probably not like that every week, is it?” some doubt creeps into Mason’s voice. Since the EL CID, he has only been to Leiden for an exam and for the congress at which Kofi Annan spoke. Jacquemin, who is a member of the Leidsch Studenten Rugby Gezelschap (LSRG), visits Leiden more often: “Beer’s cheaper, but B.A.S.I.S is going to do something about that in The Hague shortly.”

The Hague is a logical setting for this department, says Magliano-Tromp. His office, on the twelfth floor of the Stichthage location, at the Central Station, has a view across the city. “Walking from here to the Schouwburgstraat location, you can’t miss all the embassies and NGO offices, which is convenient for both the department’s contacts and the students’ contacts. A student from Bulgaria lost his wallet and his passport on the first day of his course and while he was sorting that out at the embassy, he managed to arrange an internship the same day.”

In the third year, however, the students will have to go to Leiden for a few subjects, and sometimes exams are held there. “But initially, we want the group to stay together here; we want to keep that esprit de corps alive that we’ve been encouraging since we started.”

The close ties between the students sometimes causes confusion though too, observes Mason. “Our Facebook group helps each other when things aren’t clear, but sometimes the study assignments differ slightly per tutorial group, and helping each other just makes it worse.”

“Yes, we’ve noticed that too”, says Magliano-Tromp. “We expected the students to go to the tutor if they had questions, not that they would get each other confused. I suppose teething troubles are all part of it and we can learn from them. Evidently you can’t take anything for granted in such a large, new and international company. You also have to mind that students from some cultures learn to think for themselves, think critically and not to use authority arguments. And it can’t hurt to warn British students to look left first when crossing the road.”

The department will have to attract around four hundred students again in the coming year, but if far more apply, it won’t put any enrolment restrictions on the course. Magliano-Tromp says: “I don’t think you can do that so close to the start of the academic year. Besides, a large department is what we were hoping for.”

They have achieved their goal. “After all, we don’t want this department cannibalising other Humanities departments by stealing potential students. The enrolment numbers in the other departments are stable”, explains Van den Doel. For Magliano-Tromp, that is good news: “We’ve tapped into a new focus group with this ‘international classroom’ that we had never succeeded in reaching before.”

Facts & figures

377 students were enrolled when International Studies started in September 2012. 144 of them are international students and around 250 IS students are members of the student fraternity B.A.S.I.S. (Bachelor Students of International Studies). After six months of attending lectures on global history, culture, politics and economics together, the first group has recently had to choose a region of the world as a specialist subject.

The expertise comes from all the institutes of the Humanities Faculty, but particularly the history department, the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) and the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS).