Leiden University College The Hague
Education
Leiden University College offers Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science degrees within a Liberal Arts & Sciences programme that focuses on four Global Challenges: Peace & Justice, Sustainability, Prosperity, and Diversity. The programme’s environment is characterized by small-scale, interactive sessions that allows the learning process to be a shared experience between lecturer and student.
Liberal Arts and Sciences
The Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) approach sees the university experience as an opportunity for students to develop a wide range of academic and social skills, sharpen their analytical competences, and lay the ground for taking their future steps with confidence.
In term of the curriculum, LAS involves an educational programme that is multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary in orientation. Students learn to think in and move between disciplines, enabling them to develop their critical skills and enhance their academic horizons. Both the Global Challenges in the 1st Year and the Majors in the 2nd and 3rd Years present our students with cross-disciplinary tools to assess and analyse social and material reality. The additional focus on Global Citizenship grounds them with an ethical outlook, an understanding and appreciation of their place in the world, and what they can contribute to it.
Alongside the educational programme, students are encouraged to engage in extra-curricular activities as a fundamental part of their LUC Liberal Arts and Sciences experience. This begins with the combining of academic and residential communities, with students organizing their lives within and around the College. The wide range of student-run clubs provide a host of openings for pursuing hobbies with friends, engaging in volunteer work around the city, or running the student bar. Student input in the College itself is also valued, with opportunities for representing the student body on boards and committees.
Academically, we enable our students to respond critically and creatively to the flows of a rapidly changing world, drawing on a set of diverse and dynamic perspectives. Socially, we provide an intense and rewarding intercultural experience that facilitates our students on their journey to become global citizens. LAS is thus an all-encompassing educational philosophy that lays the ground for our graduates to pursue their chosen careers with self-confidence and success.
Leiden University College's focus on Global Challenges sets us apart from other Liberal Arts and Sceinces programmes. Whereas similar Colleges are framed around the traditional approach of disciplines, LUC is orientated around a more innovative model of themes.
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Global Challenges are the major issues facing humanity and the planet. They cannot be solved by one nation, institution or organisation on their own. Input from a range of stakeholders - governments, international organisations, business, civil society – is necessary to analyse, understand, and respond to these issues. The multi-disciplinarity and inter-disciplinarity of our Liberal Arts and Sciences programme provides the knowledge and skills for being able to comprehend and collectively address the problems faced by the world today. |
At the end of the 1st Year’s Global Challenges programme, students choose a major from among the six available. Three are grouped under Bachelor of Science: Global Public Health; Governance, Economics, and Development; Earth, Energy, and Sustainability. Three are Bachelor of Arts: International Justice; World Politics; Culture, History, and Society.
The Liberal Arts & Sciences approach allows our students to benefit from a high degree of freedom to construct their own programme. In their 2nd and 3rd Years, their academic programme is largely framed by their choice of major. Even then, in order to promote multi- and inter-disciplinarity in their degree, plenty of spaces are available in their programme for taking elective courses from other majors at LUC. LUC is proud to note that no two students have ever had the same study plan.
The academic year at Leiden University College is divided up into four blocks of eight weeks. Courses are typically valued at 5 credits (EC) and completed in one block. Most students take three courses per block. The estimated workload is 52 hours per week, including class time.
More on our programme structure.
Special Programmes
At Leiden University College The Hague, we offer two additional special programmes students can follow alongside their major.
For students who have an interest in fine or performing arts, there is the option of taking courses or even a full minor (30 EC, at least 10 at 300-level) via the Academy of Performing and Creative Arts. The Academy works closely with the Royal Conservatoire and the Royal Academy of Creative Arts, both within a 10 minute walk from the LUC Campus.
For those more interested in the theoretical side or if you are not interested in doing a full minor, a range of courses is available in Music, Sonology and Fine Arts Theory (increasingly in English). The full overview of both the minors and the courses can be found here.
The Double Degree Studies progamme offered by LUC and Leiden Law School enables ambitious students to pursue two degrees at the same time: a Bachelor of Arts degree (with a major in International Justice) and an LL.B degree. More information on this is available here.