The Level of HBO Education

Two weeks ago field research was done on HBO students and teachers, to establish the level of education. The enquirers wanted to know if the level of education being taught was at a high enough standard to proceed on with being a HBO education.

As a senior year student this cannot affect the level of my diploma, but nevertheless I started to think about how this can affect my chances on the market. It is no icebreaker to solicit at a company, saying you graduated at a school which is dropped from an HBO to a MBO level.

I started to do some research on the Web, to see if there are more schools with similar problems. On Molblog.nl I saw a post on how many HBO educations cannot cope with the speed of developments in the Multimedia world.

According to some teachers it is difficult to teach students about the new developments. When a development submerges, there is no telling if this development is going to last, or if it will fail. It is very hard to give an exam about a development, which has not yet proven to be successful. The only thing teachers can do is discuss these new developments in an objective way, so you can judge for yourself whether the development will be successful or not.

The post on Molblog.nl led to quite a discussion about the way that a HBO student should work. Some say that the education gives you a basis from which you are accepted to watch out for new developments and learn about them yourself. Others believe that there are flaws in the education, preventing the students from developing to an HBO level.

I for one believe that the education does give you a good basis. They teach you to do a lot of research and watch the market for any new developments. Although it happens, that a student has to explain something to a teacher, we must not forget that an HBO education is all about self-reliance and learning to deal with the problems you encounter.