Maastricht University - History

History

Maastricht University was officially established in 1976 to become the eighth public medical school in the Netherlands. Faced with a shortage of medical professionals, the national government decided in the late 1960s that a new public institution of higher education was needed in order to expand the country's medical training facilities. Political leaders in the province of Limburg, most notably Sjeng Tans, the chairman of the Dutch Labour Party and former member of the Limburg provincial council and Maastricht city council, successfully lobbied for the new medical school to be established in Maastricht. This new academic institution, Tans argued, would not only be vital to sustain the city's intellectual life, but could also contribute to the government's restructuring efforts in the southernmost part of the Netherlands, which was experiencing serious economic challenges following the collapse of the regional coal mining industry.

By the early 1970s, however, the shortage of medical professionals had all but disappeared and political support for a new medical school waned. In an unusual decision, the newly established school decided not to await official recognition and to start its educational programme in September 1974, promising an innovative approach to academic education by adopting a new teaching method known as problem-based learning. About 50 students enrolled in the first academic year. By the end of 1975, the Dutch Parliament eventually passed the statute needed for the institution to acquire national educational funds and to be able to award academic degrees. The new university, named Rijksuniversiteit Limburg, was officially established on January 9, 1976, when Queen Juliana of the Netherlands signed the university’s founding charter at a ceremony in Maastricht. Sjeng Tans became the university's first president.

Soon after its establishment, the university gained political support to expand into other academic fields. A Faculty of Law was created in 1981, to be followed by an economics faculty in 1984. In the 1990s, the Faculty of Arts and Culture and the Faculty of Psychology were established. The university adopted a growth strategy focusing on new academic disciplines, such as knowledge engineering and biomedical studies, and began to develop educational programmes with a distinctly European outlook, such as the European Law School and European Studies. At the beginning of the 21st century, the university started to establish schools and colleges, such as University College Maastricht (2002), one of the first liberal arts colleges in the Netherlands, and the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance (2004). Often created as separate entities within the university, these new departments were later integrated in the university’s faculty structure.

The university was renamed Universiteit Maastricht in 1996 and switched to its current English-language name in 2008. As of 2010, Maastricht University consists of six faculties offering 17 bachelor’s programmes, 56 master’s programmes and several Ph.D. programmes.