The dangers of the Dutch grading culture
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Foto: Chamin Panapala
There is a moment international students share when they receive their first grade at a Dutch university. Probably a 6 out of 10, maybe even just a little bit above 5,5? Panic settles in, you probably look around, and the Dutch students shrug in indifference. Perhaps the professor even has ‘good job!’ written on the corner in red ink. In the Netherlands, a 10 is the highest grade to exist, but an 8 is really the highest grade you can get—9 if you’re a real overachiever.
‘As an overachiever, it does frustrate me a bit’
For the students who grew up with this grading system, viewing a 7 out of 10 as ‘great work!’ is the norm. But can this affect those who aren’t accustomed to this culture? Erasmus student, Dimitra Angelaki, says that she ‘had gotten information from previous Erasmus students from my university that have come to Radboud.’ Even with that warning, it was disappointing receiving grades in the Netherlands because she kept comparing it to her standards.
Alexandra Maiuga, international Bachelor student says that she was told from the beginning that nobody gets a 10 in Dutch universities. However, it was confusing once she delivered great papers that she worked hard on, only to receive a 7,5 accompanied by really encouraging feedback. To her, the kind of effort she put in and the response she received translated to a high grade, yet it is still far from a full score.
Doe normaal
Radboud University, of course, has professors from various backgrounds. So, is this issue merely present at our university in particular, or is this an issue built around cultural differences?
At Radboud, Maiuga takes a variety of courses such as American and British Literature, Arts and Culture, and Linguistics. All of her professors are Dutch except for one German and ‘they all seem to be holding back with grades,’ she says. ‘Many assume we’ll know what they expect, even though some of us are new here. Also, some are very detailed with feedback, while others are vague. It would be nice to have more consistency and better feedback from everyone.’
The Dutch have a habit of staying amidst the comfortable and average
There is also, of course, the culture of normalcy amongst the Dutch. Doe normaal (‘be normal’) or doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg (‘be ordinary and you will be crazy enough’) are famous sayings that reflect the Dutch habit of staying amidst the comfortable and average, which could be a reason why certain professors view 7 as a good grade.
Angelaki supposes that the university wants to push students to work harder. Maiuga guesses that this grading culture might exist due to the fact that the university views a 10 as work that surpasses all expectations, which would not happen for the normal, average student. ‘As an overachiever, it does frustrate me a bit,’ she says. This is understandable since a 10 is still a viable option on the grading scale, yet it seems to be completely unattainable at our university.
Stressed
For Maiuga, the grading system does not have a detrimental effect. It is frustrating that she can never get a 10, but she has more anxiety over the fact that ‘it is not enough to barely pass in the Netherlands, you have to go beyond that.’ Although her grades do not affect her too much, it does make her question what value her grades hold at all, since it seems that a grade ‘holds as much value as we place on it.’
Nevertheless, Angelaki experiences it differently as an Erasmus student as she says that ‘the grading system has caused me a lot of stress.’ She was required to apply to six courses, thus causing a heavy workload. Because it is also her last semester, she has ‘to pass most of the classes with at least a 7 so as not to ruin my average. The average is not that important for work, but I need it to apply for my master’s in Greece.’
As a result, she has been stressed due to her fixation on maintaining her average. Back home, she was able to achieve a 7 with half as much work as needed here, so it has heavily affected her sleep patterns and stress level—causing some health issues. ‘The issue is it would not have mattered if I was a permanent student here. But as an Erasmus student, the system here can be very frustrating since it will inevitably have to clash with my home university,’ she says.
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peter rietbergen wrote on 18 oktober 2019 at 16:43
Interesting, but maybe, in other countries “high” grades are more easily given than in The Netherlands…? Or maybe the course load(s) are not as heavy….?
Bert van Loo wrote on 28 mei 2020 at 21:04
As a university lecturer in the UK, but having studied in the Netherlands (I am Dutch) and worked in Germany as scientific staff with teaching duties I have some feeling for what may be the issue here. As an example I will take the UK grading system to make my point.
In the UK, universities work with % scores (100% being the maximum for perfection) during the 3-year bachelor, but the final degree grade, i.e. the one on your degree certificate you show to future employers, really only has five different levels (% in brackets): 1st (70-100), upper 2nd (60-69), lower 2nd (50-59), 3rd (40-49), and fail (below 40). I will not go into the reputation differences between universities in the UK at this point.
In the Netherlands grades are rounded to the nearest integer based on the % score you get based on the formula: % out 9+1 (e.g. 50% score translates to 0.5*9+1 = 5.5, which is rounded up to 6, the minimal passing grade). So as you can see a Dutch average of 7.3 (which equates to 70%) or 8.5 (83%, not common but does occasionally happen) would give the same top grade in the UK system (a 1st), even though there clearly is a difference in performance between the two grades. The Dutch system, unlike many others, leaves room at the top for the very good (grade = 8), the excellent (9) and the truly brilliant (10). A bit of background: when grading was introduced in schools and universities in the Netherlands the general idea was that perfection, i.e. a 10, is not attainable for mere mortals and even the teacher only qualifies for a 9, so students can only expect an 8 at most. As a result a 10 is really only attainable for multiple choice exams or in mathematics or physics, where the scoring for answers is typically absolute and leaves little room for interpretation (the answer is either correct or not).
Another thing that you have to keep in mind when you see your fellow students shrug of a minimal passing grade (6) as if this is nothing to worry about, is that in the Dutch culture your grade average for your university degree is not all that important for your future, unless you want to reach high honours (varies between universities but requires roughly >7.5 on average (weighted by ECTS credits) and at least 8.5 average for final year(s) thesis projects/internships, probably less than 5% of students achieve this level). Within the dutch education system, the very fact that you reached university means you already belong to the top ~15-20% of your generation in terms of academic ability, so just graduating at all puts you ahead of 80% of the country in terms of your academic achievement (whether that makes you a success is another (very subjective) matter). It is a bit analogous to the age-old joke: ‘What do you call the person ranked last in the final year of medical school?’ Answer: ‘Dr.’.
What does matter for your further career is how you perform during thesis projects and long-term internships during your final year, and the contacts you make at that point are very important. Good grades for courses will certainly not hurt, but doing well on your thesis will make any mediocre grades for your regular courses irrelevant.
Many of the points highlighted above are done properly in the document you can find at the link below:
https://students.uu.nl/sites/default/files/geo-grading-systems-holland-vs-us-uk.pdf
Beau Martin wrote on 18 november 2020 at 07:02
Thank you for your very good synopsis. Let me add however that in the program that my child attends at the University of Amsterdam not only do they count you off for getting problems wrong, when calculating a multiple choice score they now calculate the probability that you selected the right answer by chance and effectively deduct a 1/n points from each question answered where n is the number of answer choices provided. This of course is both the most aggressive and the most naive approach possible. It assumes that any choice is equally likely and that the presence of choices provided the test taker not just some value but full value, that is that their own efforts and ability to prepare were worth nothing. This of course would be easy to correct for by taking entropy into account (if a question is easy it was the question or the class well prepared, the presence of answers would have had little to no effect, on the other hand if test takers were guessing completely at random, the answers again provide almost no assistance other than establishing bounds on the minimum probability of a correct answer). In other situations the wording of a question or answer can be misleading, in particular when the test’s author has been imprecise or incomplete with their thinking or in their description, leading to clear exceptions to what they believe is the correct answer and a similar, also flawed answer also exists (in which case selecting one of the two right or nearly right answers ought to be viewed as less wrong than selecting entirely incorrect answers). In my child’s program they count off a quarter point though, which is the limit under the worst and most derogatory conditions (the student literally knows nothing, their ability to get the question right at all was entirely based on the presence of the score, even an idiot will get one right sometime). This also means negative scores are entirely possible and tens now still generally impossible to achieve.
Jazmeen wrote on 27 april 2022 at 17:03
You make no sense. I am worried now that you are affecting grades of innocent graduates in the UK with your Dutch mentality. If your Dutch educational system is so great then why you even left your great Kingdom of the Netherlands?
Avis wrote on 8 april 2021 at 19:28
My (Dutch) university straight up told us on the introduction day, that a 10 is for god. This is just ridiculous.
The biggest issue is that by doing this, they a) tell students ”they will never be good enough” and b) by doing this they actually condition students not to even bother, because ”they will never be good enough anyway”.
Providing students with a scale where excellence is unattainable is extremely damaging. The grading system in general puts immense pressure on students from a very young age, but if you teach them that they can never ever be the best, even when they actually are, then this system stinks. Who are you comparing them to? Why is the 10 there if no one is able to get it?
Bert van Loo wrote on 1 juni 2021 at 15:16
I may sound a little harsh, but you are making no sense. A perfect score is attainable, but only for near perfect work. Hard work and ambition alone are not enough in that case, you also need to be extremely intelligent (and vice versa). This combination is unique and we should not equate a good performance with an excellent one to protect students from discovering the ‘harsh’ reality that they are unlikely to win a Nobel prize (I exaggerate of course), but are still going to have a very decent job that pays well above average if they ‘only’ get an 8 (or even if they just pass with a minimal grade, there is more to a career than just good grades in school). We are not talking about children or adolescents here. University students are legal adults and we should approach them as such.
Jazmeen wrote on 27 april 2022 at 17:06
Avis I can feel you. Dutch educational and grading system is completely ridiculous. They think that they are the best while their professors are mediocre and most of the time have no idea what they are even teaching. As an international student, I feel I just burnt my hard earning money (approx 34K for two year masters). I would have been way better choosing UK over the Netherlands.
Keyshav Mor wrote on 10 december 2021 at 10:33
Actually I have a similar conundrum because I studied at TU Eindhoven and graduated with an average grade of 7.375 with a 7.5 in my master thesis. In all fairness, I believe Dutch education system is really great compared to the rest as I have studied in Germany and India and I believe I had to work hard for my grades but at the same time I learned a lot and enjoyed a lot.
But when I gave my master thesis presentation, I had really worked hard on the subject and I think I deserved at least an 8 because I researched on a very new, complex topic at a top research group in Switzerland and my thesis work was impeccable in the sense that many people eventually contacted me to reuse my work (it was in embedded systems engineering domain), although I did not publish any paper since I think it was not worth publishing a serious scientific research paper. However, I got a 7.5 on my thesis.
This brought down my average by at least 0.125 points and I feel that I should have graduated with an average of 7.5 at least. Now I really don’t know how to translate this achievement. I don’t have a good rubric. My university, TU Eindhoven says that 7 is a satisfactory achievement. I do not understand satisfactory. Since I am from India, being anywhere average or satisfactory is interpreted as a collective shame (joke of course because plenty of average Indians exist at top institutions) but on a serious note, being satisfactory is not considered good enough in India since you are competing with millions for a top notch opportunity.
So can anyone help me interpret my score better in an equivalent German/UK/Swiss grading system? I think my average grade is affecting my Ph.D. applications.
guil wrote on 19 maart 2022 at 01:52
You need another master from another country to get better scores.
Νικόλας wrote on 20 juli 2022 at 16:35
It is rumoured that Dutch universities reviewed Einstein’s work and decided it would qualify for a 6 or a 7, maybe. If he would have made a bit more effort, it may have even got an 8; too bad he’s no longer able to amend his life’s work…
Dutch grading is a joke.