University of Amsterdam|Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

This entry names the University of Amsterdam and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, two legally separate public research universities that share the city and, in several fields, graduate programs and a medical center. The University of Amsterdam traces to the Athenaeum Illustre of 1632 and occupies buildings across the historic center and Science Park. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam was founded in 1880 as a Protestant institution and is now a secular campus university in the Zuidas district. Together they form Amsterdam's dual research-university system.

The University of Amsterdam is organized into seven faculties, including humanities, social and behavioural sciences, economics and business, law, science, medicine, and dentistry. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam has a similar spread, plus religion and theology. Shared graduate infrastructure includes Amsterdam UMC, the merged academic medical center, and ACTA, the joint Faculty of Dentistry. Economics, psychology, law, computer science, and biomedical research are the fields in which the two universities most often appear together for graduate study.

The University of Amsterdam enrolls about 40,000 students and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam about 30,000. Each has a large master's population and an international share that is often above 20 percent at master's level, drawn from well over 100 countries. Faculty numbers run into the thousands across both. Alumni include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Tobias Asser, who studied in Amsterdam, and generations of Dutch ministers, jurists, and physicians from the two medical faculties now joined in Amsterdam UMC.

Graduate study includes one-year taught master's degrees, two-year research master's degrees, and the Dutch PhD, in which the candidate is usually employed as a promovendus. English is common at master's and doctoral level. The calendar is the Dutch semester year. Doctoral funding is typically a salaried university contract. Students live across Amsterdam and move by bicycle among inner-city buildings, Science Park, and the Zuidas campus.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, University of Amsterdam|Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam lists 1 master's program, in computer science.