Visit from leading Dutch universities of technology

On Thursday, KTH will receive a visit from the three leading universities of technology in Netherlands: TU Delft, TU Eindhoven and University of Twente, who together make up the 3TU federation. In a full day of activities we will be holding presentations and discussing issues of joint interest.

The Dutch universities are represented by their respective executive boards, which consist of chairman, president and vice-president. The 3TU federation is led by the chairmen of the three universities. 3TU is a collaborative organisation for education, research and innovation.

There are five joint master’s programmes. There is also an open structure where students with a bachelor’s degree from one of the three universities have greater mobility in their choice of master’s programme. It will be interesting to find out how this works and the mobility it has given the students. I would like to see greater mobility in Sweden in the transition from bachelor’s to master’s programmes.

In the research arena there are five joint Centres of Competence and eight joint Centres of Excellence. As I understand it, the Centres of Competence have a slightly looser collaborative form than the Centres of Excellence. It will be interesting to find out more about it.

KTH and the three Dutch universities of technology share many similarities. The Netherlands and Sweden are relatively small countries that depend strongly on exports and an open international economy. The universities of technology are also affected. I believe that we have much to gain by collaborating and exchanging experience.

We have a number of existing collaborative projects. Like KTH, TU Eindhoven is part of the Cluster network. The three Dutch universities are also active partners in the EIT initiatives InnoEnergy and ICT Labs.

In the Times Higher Education’s latest rankings, TU Delft and TU Eindhoven are slightly ahead of KTH. We are all among the top ten ranking universities of technology in Europe.

Report