At Ghent University, we strive to educate people who dare to think about the challenges of tomorrow. For that purpose, we provide education that is embedded in six strategic objectives: Think Broadly, Keep Researching, Cultivate Talent, Contribute, Extend Horizons, Opt for Quality.
Ghent University continuously focuses on quality assurance and quality culture. The Ghent University's quality assurance system offers information on each study programme’s unique selling points, and on its strengths and weaknesses with regard to quality assurance.

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Ghent University's Education Objectives

Quality Assurance at Ghent University

1. Multiperspectivism: we train our students to become critical professionals who can function independently and in a team in a wide range of sectors such as the chemical, biotechnological, food and pharmaceutical industry. We teach our students solid academic reasoning skills, and the skills necessary to work in a creative and problem-solving manner. Questioning existing knowledge and adopting an active attitude of lifelong learning is second-nature to our graduates.
2. Talent development: our students have a great deal of freedom in tailoring their curriculum according to their own interests. A set of electives leaves room for either in-depth or a more broadening scope of training. Broadening skills can focus on societal, social and business skills. We also encourage our students to gain experience elsewhere, e.g. in the professional field through work placements, or abroad through exchange programmes.
3. Knowledge creation: we encourage students to apply their acquired knowledge in a creative, purposeful and innovative way when developing new and/or improving existing processes (chemical, enzymatic and microbial transformation processes) and products.
4. Quantitative thinking: our study programme not only aims at understanding the processes in handling and processing (biological) raw materials into (bio)chemical products with high added value, but also at being to describe them quantitatively, predict them, to manage, optimize and scale them up.
5. Flexibly employable and application-oriented: our programme brings together recent developments in academic/scientific research as well as in industrial innovations. The professional field covers various sectors, ranging from research-related, technical-commercial and, production-related, to quality and sustainability monitoring positions. Our graduates speak the language of various scientific disciplines and flexibly employable.

1. Solid Preparation: the Master’s Programme of Bioscience Engineering: Chemistry and Bioprocessing Technology builds on the Bachelor’s programme in Chemistry and Food Technology. Students, in other words, enter the Master’s programme well-prepared. This is apparent from the good study success rate in the Master’s.
2. Our programme boasts a dedicated and loyal team of lecturers. Students agree that supervision by the professorial and academic assistant staff ranges from ‘good’ to ‘very good’. Our teaching staff is highly approachable, either in person or via e-mail. Students experience no thresholds when contacting their lecturers. The team shows great flexibility to ensure that teaching and assessment activities run as optimally as possible for the students.
3. Strong research support and interaction with the professional sector:many of our professorial staff maintain close contacts with companies in their sector and coordinate ongoing industrial cooperation projects, in which students can participate for their Master’s dissertation or work placement. This results in strong research support for the programme.
4. The Master’s dissertation process: students are satisfied with the wide range of Master’s dissertation topics and the learning process they go through. Clearly defined assessment criteria, the involvement of several (and often external) objective jury members and the combination of a permanent chairperson and secretary guarantee a consistent and objective final mark for all students.
5. The excellent quality of our science-based curriculum scores high in student satisfaction surveys. Our modular approach and electives in the curriculum are clearly talent-driven choices. The curriculum focuses on knowledge integration, authentic learning experiences and active teaching methods, e.g. in the new practical course unit ‘Integrated Practical on Advanced Organic Chemistry’.

1. Internationalisation: despite the fact that up to a quarter of graduating Master’s students have completed at least a part of their education abroad through an exchange programme, ‘internationalisation’ is not always seen as an added value. We make additional efforts to embed international and intercultural competencies in the curriculum by offering extra exchange opportunities such as international work placements, by promoting internationalisation@home initiatives and by clustering English-taught courses in one term to attract incoming exchange students.
2. More focus on communication and co-operation as a competency: our study programme wants to focus more on the development of social and communication skills throughout the curriculum. This means that a learning pathway has been set up across the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes, in which the skills of oral and written academic communication are taught gradually. In addition, the study programme wishes to focus more on the use of peer assessment in group assignments, in which students can assess each other in terms of group performance.
3. Feedback: Communication from lecturers to students, in particular feedback on group assignments, practicals and presentations, remains a point of concern. Students indicate that there is room for improvement in our programme’s feedback policy. Therefore, we take initiatives to embed feedback (interim or otherwise) better into the curriculum.

This study programme is accredited by the Accreditation Organization of the Netherlands and Flanders (Dutch: NVAO). Accreditation was extended following the positive outcome of the institutional review in 2022. Programme quality was validated by a quality review, i.e. a screening of the Education Monitor by the Education Quality Board. The Quality Assurance Resolution (in Dutch) can be found here.

This information was last updated on 01/02/2023.
In case of questions or suggestions with regard to the publicly available information, please contact the study programme.