Company course
Company course
The urgency of energy transition and its affordability; the rising costs of our healthcare system and the use of technological aids; the lack of tolerance for others and the pressure this puts on social cohesion.
The number and complexity of these wicked problems in the social context are more likely to increase than decrease in the coming decades. Fontys can and wants to contribute to resolving these issues. Students can lay the foundation for a meaningful social contribution during their careers. Professionals can come to us for retraining, post-training, and additional training. And, through practice-based research, we contribute to a constructive response to the continuous stream of rapid, far-reaching changes in society. Talent for society and knowledge for society!
Want to know more about our vision and course? Read Fontys for Society, our strategy for 2021-2025.
Fontys For Society
Our company course to 2025Our assignment
Development is a key concept at Fontys. Young people develop their talents as students with us, we develop relevant practical knowledge, working professionals can also develop further at Fontys, we respond flexibly to far-reaching social developments and – last but not least – within our community we develop ourselves by sharing knowledge and skills.
We operate in the heart of society. In our hybrid learning and research environments, students, lecturers, researchers, and professionals work together. In that way, education and research, as well as learning and working, become increasingly intertwined. Our main social value is therefore the development of talent and knowledge.
Fontys is a multidisciplinary university of applied sciences in the south of the Netherlands. Together with and for the (regional) professional environments, we provide high-quality, higher vocational education and conduct innovative, practice-oriented research. In this way, we contribute to the development of a dynamic, inclusive, and sustainable society.
Our identity
Ask ten employees, students or professional partners to describe Fontys’ identity, and nine times out of ten these three elements will come up: our size and broad expertise, our personal approach, and our warm community including thousands of (international) students and employees.
“The strength of our size”
Over 46,000 students and 5,000 staff. Locations in 10 cities in two different provinces. 89 bachelor's programmes of which 23 English taught, full-time, part-time and dual, in almost every conceivable 'discipline' on the labour market. And: 28 master's programmes, 15 associate degrees, and a large range of courses and study programmes for the business market. No fewer than 41 lectorates engaged in research and knowledge innovation. Fontys is a large, substantively broad, and geographically dispersed university of applied sciences. It is this richness that offers great opportunities – opportunities for a flexible educational programme for the individual student, and opportunities for multidisciplinary research.
“The intimacy of our approach”
Fontys is also characterised by an informal culture and a personal approach. We focus on the individual. First and foremost, this means we focus attention on our students, but it also implies our care for Fontys employees, alumni, potential students, and the close and often personal contact with our partners in the professional field. The latter is precisely a consequence of our locations: the Fontys institutes are firmly rooted in the region.
“The dynamics of our community”
The third pillar of our identity: collaboration within our active community network of highly educated professionals, students, and partners in the working world. The first two elements of our identity lead directly to the third: the size and breadth of Fontys, complemented by its informal culture and the warm, spontaneous (internal and external) contacts 'from the bottom up', make Fontys a dynamic entity. We certainly have some way to go in terms of internal and external multidisciplinary cooperation, but the potential of Fontys as a close-knit knowledge community is widely recognised.
Our values
We carry out our mission with intrinsic motivation, based on shared values that have long characterised our organisation. These are values that we find important.
Personal attention and connection
We give personal attention to students, professionals, and colleagues. We focus on personal contact, guiding our students, and connecting with each other.
Diverse and socially just
Everyone gets the chance to develop optimally, in a way and in a place that suits each of us. We respect and value diversity, because differences between people enrich and inspire us.
Courage, innovation, growth, and development
We also challenge each other with innovations and new forms of learning, and by learning and working together intensively. In doing so, we offer opportunities, but at the same time we are also a safety net. Facing these challenges requires courage and daring.
Open, honest, and trustworthy
We are open and transparent about the quality of our organisation, education, and research – and about how students, staff and professionals experience these. We give each other constructive feedback on the quality of learning, teaching, and research. In doing so, we also reflect on our own behaviour. In this way, we give shape to our social mission together, with integrity.
Fontys for Society
In 2020, together with the entire Fontys community – students, staff, external partners – we drew up a new strategic plan for the coming five years: Fontys For Society. The core of this plan is that Fontys wants to develop further in three areas. By 2025, we aim to be an even more talent-oriented, research-oriented, and flexible Fontys.
