University of Groningen awarded EUR 1.15 million for honours path in Master’s phase

On Thursday 18 November 2010, State Secretary Halbe Zijlstra awarded nearly EUR 6.4 million to six universities to realize honours programmes in the Master’s phase. The grants have been awarded within the framework of the Sirius Programme. The University of Groningen received a cheque for EUR 1.15 million from the State Secretary.

The University of Groningen has been awarded the grant for the Excelleren op de Grenzen van het Weten [Excelling at the Frontiers of Knowledge] programme, in which students develop and train leadership skills in an interdisciplinary setting.

The other universities to receive grants were Nijmegen, Delft, Leiden, Maastricht and Utrecht.

Sirius Programme

The Sirius Programme has resulted from the final report of the ‘Ruim Baan voor Talent’ [Plenty of Room for Talent] commission. With this programme, the government wants to stimulate universities and universities of applied sciences to offer extra education at the highest level to their best students.

A total of EUR 61 million was made available to the Sirius Programme, fifty of which came from gas revenues. The institutions which have been awarded money must also match the grant themselves.

The sums that were awarded on Thursday are part of the second round of the programme, which has awarded grants for the Master’s phase. In the first round, nineteen universities (including Groningen) and universities of applied sciences were awarded grants to design and implement programmes of excellence in the Bachelor’s phase.