Maastricht University

Maastricht University

Former names	Rijksuniversiteit Limburg
Motto	Leading in Learning
Type	Public
Established	1976
Endowment	€378 million
President	Martin Paul
Rector	Rianne Letschert
Academic staff	1,841
Administrative staff	1,392
Students	15,916
Location	Maastricht, Netherlands
Affiliations	EUA, VSNU, AMBA, EQUIS, AACSB, WUN, YERUN
Website	www.maastrichtuniversity.nl

Maastricht University (abbreviated as UM;Dutch: Universiteit Maastricht) is a public university in Maastricht, the Netherlands. Founded in 1976, the university is the second youngest of the 13 Dutch universities.

In 2013, nearly 16,000 students studied at Maastricht University, 47% of whom were foreign students, with over 3,200 employees. About half of the bachelor's programmes are fully offered in English, while the other half is taught wholly or partly in Dutch. Most of the master's and doctoral programmes are in English. In 2013, Maastricht University was the second Dutch university to be rewarded the ‘Distinctive Quality Feature for Internationalisation’ by the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO).

Besides traditional programmes, Maastricht University also has an honours liberal arts college: University College Maastricht and a Maastricht Science Programme in the same liberal arts tradition. The satellite University College Venlo opened in 2015.

Maastricht University was officially established in 1976. Faced with a shortage of medical professionals, the Dutch 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 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 academic institution would be vital to sustain the intellectual life of the city, and indeed the whole province. Moreover, it was argued that the establishment of a university in Maastricht could contribute to the government's restructuring efforts in this part of the Netherlands, which was experiencing economic challenges following the collapse of the Limburg coal mining industry.