Founded in 1614, the University of Groningen is now celebrating its 400th anniversary.
The school, which offers 49 bachelor’s and 146 master’s degrees, is divided into nine faculties that serve 27,500 students, of whom 3,750 are international. Moreover, 20 percent of Groningen’s 6,500 faculty and 48 percent of its 1,500 Ph.D. students are international.
Nineteen of the bachelor’s programs are taught in English, while 101 of the master’s programs (including 10 double programs) are in English.
The university is a part of the 56-member “Excellence Group,” which includes the best 1.3% of schools in Europe. The International Students Barometer has voted Groningen the best university in the Netherlands three years in a row.
The Academic Rankings of World Universities, QS, and Times all rank Groningen—which also runs 27 research centers—among the world’s 100 most elite universities.
The school’s alumni include the distinguished historian Johan Huizinga, the physicist H.K. Onnes (one of the discoverers of superconductivity), the noted astronomers Willem de Sitter and Jan Oort, and Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Dirk Stikker (who was instrumental in creating NATO).
