The Amsterdam Business School has come under fire for what Nigerian and some African graduates have characterized as “institutional racism,” accusing the school of only accepting “African Bachelor’s Degrees” from Ghana and South Africa in its application process.
According to the university, a “African Bachelor’s Degree is usually equivalent to two years of academic education in the Netherlands.”
The ABS stated in an updated post titled ‘information for students with an African Bachelor’s Degree,’ that applicants from other African countries, except Ghana and South Africa, will need a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree to qualify for a program at the institution.
“Applicants with an African Bachelor’s degree (except for South Africa and Ghana) will need a Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree in the field of economics and business in order to be eligible for one of our MSc programmes,” it stated
Some graduates in Nigeria and other African countries saw the institution’s preference for Ghana and South Africa as prejudice.
“African bachelor’s degree?? Like there is one education system on the continent? Laziness! Institutional racism,” a Twitter user, @IreneNM, said while commenting on a screenshot of the publication shared on Twitter.
Another one, (@TheIndiaMike, lamented, “The hilarity of this is that the Dutch tertiary education system is entirely predicated on mediocrity. This approach to ‘African degrees’ is bitterly hilarious, yet not entirely unsurprising coming from this bastion of neoliberal imperialist thinking.”
@Simplylidija tweeted, “Too lazy to research and come up with country-specific entry requirements that’s what this looks like to me.”
Attempts to obtain ABS’ comments were futile because phone calls to the institution were not answered.
However, after being called out on Twitter, the school apologised, saying, “Thank you @DrFuraha_Asani @SaskiaBonjour @PollyWilkens and others for bringing to our attention that there are inaccuracies on our master’s program website. The information that is currently there, is indeed incorrect. We deeply regret this and will amend it as soon as possible.”
When Peoples Gazette visited the school, it had revised the initial post on its website, but the heading remained the same.
“Our Dutch system of higher education varies from other foreign systems of higher education,” ABS said. The most significant distinction is that in the Netherlands, we maintain a distinction between a university of applied sciences and a research university.
“In order to be eligible to an academic master’s degree at our research university (the majority are one-year Master programmes), all students, both Dutch and international, need to have completed an academic bachelor’s degree from a research university.”
It added that all international degrees were evaluated on guidelines provided by the NUFFIC (Dutch organisation for internationalisation in education).
ABS further pointed out, “In general, although this differs per country, a bachelor’s degree obtained in certain countries on the African continent does give direct entry to a programme at the Amsterdam University of Applied Science.
However, depending on the region, a completed bachelor’s degree (with the exception of some countries that offer 5- or 6-year bachelor’s degrees) does not guarantee direct admission to one of our academic Master’s programs at our research university. For direct entry, an additional completed master’s degree in economics and/or business is usually required.”