Developments at Incluusion

As you may have noticed, there have been some changes to our website. This is because Incluusion has been organizing its work a little differently from 2025 onwards. These are the most important developments at Incluusion:

Focus on events

The Incluusion Community, UU’s newest diversity network, was set up in 2024. Since then, the immense success of the Community has not gone unnoticed. Its results align with Incluusion’s focus on integration and community building. Over the past year, the Incluusion Community organised and facilitated a variety of events. Through an accessory making workshop, Master enrolment training, movie night, and potluck, the Community events hosted around 500 participants. We are excited that some of these events were organised and hosted by (new) students, showing that the Community truly is for and by people with a refugee background.

Given the huge success, we wish to continue and strengthen our collaboration with the Incluusion Community in 2025. Two Incluusion team members are on board of the Community’s core group and help with the organisation of their events. We look forward to welcoming a large group of students at the Incluusion Community events again this year. On top of that, we will continue hosting our own events aimed at the academic and social integration of our students.

Our buddy programme took a short break, because we mostly had previously involved students in the past few blocks. However, for block 1 of study year 2025-2026 we will start up the buddy programme again. We look forward to matching Incluusion students to regular UU students, so they can learn from each other and improve Incluusion students' integration in the Netherlands and at the UU, specifically. 

All future events can be found on our events page.

Selection process: no more ‘first come, first serve’

In the past, we had a ‘first come, first serve’ policy when refugee students register for free UU courses through Incluusion. Unfortunately, this led to an increase in rushed applications. Students tried to make sure that they were one of the first to register, rather than taking the time to write a thoughtful motivation letter specific to the course they selected. This made it challenging to successfully match potential students with a course that fit both their academic experience and future educational or career goals.

Ensuring our students get the most out of their time with Incluusion remains our top priority.  Therefore, our selection process has been changed. We still look at which students best meet the requirements of the course. But instead of ‘first come, first served’, we use a lottery to determine which registrations are looked at first. Apart from the lottery, we continue to give priority to students who were previously involved and to students who live closer to Utrecht.

Pathways to Education

Incluusion’s Pathways Project lasted from September 2023 to January 2025 and aimed to improve access to higher education for refugees. The project's impact and implemented changes will continue to support refugee students in the future.

Throughout the project, Incluusion added new information to the site specifically targeted at students with a refugee background:

1. Information for refugee students who want to study at Bachelor or Master UU programme. These pages include information about language and diploma requirements, help with study choice, (no) application fee, premasters, etc.
2. Financial information specifically written for refugee students. This includes student finance and the loan system, impact of funds/gifts on social benefits, travel cost support, funding options, UAF support, etc.

The Pathways Project also focused on reducing barriers to enrolment. Moving forward, Incluusion will continue to help refugee students who are considering enrolment at a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree at UU. If you have a refugee background and already have a specific programme in mind – or if you started your application and need additional guidance during this process – please contact us at incluusion@uu.nl. We will review your background with you and collaborate with International Student Admissions, the faculty and/or the admissions committee, to clarify the required courses and documents for your application. In this way, we hope to make your application process as smooth as possible.