University College Utrecht, Netherlands
Founded in 1997 with the vision to become a small scale international college, modelled after the American and British colleges, University College Utrecht (UCU) opened its gates as the international undergraduate honours college of Utrecht University. It was the first organization in the Netherlands to implement the spirit of liberal arts and sciences, an educational concept that breaks away from the traditional Dutch paradigm, where focus is on disciplinary specialization throughout the entire curriculum. At UCU, students to a large extent develop their own specific and individual curriculum, driven by their motivation for learning, by the questions and issues they want to pursue academically, and by their ambitions.