This high percentage helps us to define domains for development and improvement. The national character of the survey allows us to compare our students’ appreciation with that of students from other programmes in Fine Art and Design in the Netherlands.

As KABK has gone through a turbulent period, we have been looking forward to the results. The outcome shows that students appreciate KABK and we can see an average upward trend in the ratings over the last years. The NSE also tells that we have quite some work to do within important domains. Social safety, workload, and internationalisation remain our undiminished top priorities for improvement.

Overall appreciation

Overall, students from our master's programmes give higher ratings on average on almost all questions compared to our bachelor’s programmes and compared to other art academies. Our bachelor’s students give somewhat lower ratings than art and design students elsewhere.

The scores on ‘satisfaction with the programme in general’ and 'would you choose the same programme again' indicate that students appreciate the institution and its education, even during turbulent times. This is a compliment to our educational departments.

Feedback and social safety

Social safety is one of our priorities, and an active feedback culture is an important component. Do teachers value student feedback and is the programme open to feedback? And do students feel safe to be themselves and at home at the institution? The scores on these questions indicate that we are on the right track, but we still have work to do.

Study load

Because of the complaints of overload, we asked additional questions on study load. The study load itself seems quite under control. The distribution of the study load over the whole year, however, leaves room for improvement. These scores give a clear indication where the priority lies within this topic.

International dimension

NSE themes International Aspects and International Students are strongly linked to the international and intercultural profile of KABK. Students have therefore been asked whether they feel ‘encouraged to learn about other cultures’. Remarkably, despite our efforts in counselling international students, students’ experience in integrating into Dutch society is rated by both bachelors and masters with an insufficient average. This was also the case in 2021. We know that housing is very difficult for international students, but we need to find out more about the factors involved here to effectively follow up.

About NSE

The National Student Survey (NSE) is a large-scale annual national survey in which students give their opinions about their education. At KABK, the NSE results of each department have also been shared with the heads of the departments and other colleagues, enabling us to discuss the underlying factors behind these statistics and work on the improvement of the quality of the course programmes.

If you would like to learn more about the quality culture at the KABK, please visit the 'Quality Assurance' page on our website.