Curriculum & Courses

To support students in developing essential academic skills, we offer a course catalogue containing around 150 courses, skills trainings and projects. These form the foundation of a solid academic or professional career.

Concentration
The concentration is a central part of the curriculum, which allows students to gain in-depth knowledge in their fields of interest. UCM offers a choice of three concentrations: Humanities, Social Sciences and Sciences. Students may focus on a particular discipline (e.g. psychology, economics, history or biology) or instead opt for courses around a combination of themes or disciplines. For instance, a curriculum could include economics, law and international relations, or sciences and psychology, or cultural studies and history. Through the concentration, students gather specialised knowledge that enables them, upon graduation, to enrol in a master’s programme of their choice or to start a professional career.

The academic core and general education
In addition to the courses in the concentration, every student needs to complete the ‘academic core’. It consists of four courses that give the fundamental knowledge any academic should have. These courses are about the principles of scientific research, the major political issues of our time, historical developments in the world over the last 70 years, and why abstract concepts and models are vital in science.

Moreover, in order to get a broad perspective students choose four courses outside of their concentration. This ensures that students are able to think from different perspectives and understand how people in other academic areas think and work.

Skills trainings
UCM places considerable emphasis on developing academic skills, which are essential to any successful career. Many of UCM’s Skills trainings focus on research methodology and design. All students must complete the Research Methods Skills Trainings and a Project during their first year. These modules focus on the general principles of doing research and on different research traditions. This leads up to a four week project, in which small groups of students carry out a study of their own design.

In their second year, students can choose to take more advanced Skills trainings and Courses that explore different research techniques in greater depth, including for instance Statistics, Qualitative and Quantitative Methods, Ethnographic Interviewing, Laboratory Skills and Legal Research.

Projects
Research is central to UCM’s Projects. During these Projects, students work fulltime on applying the research skills they have acquired in Skills Trainings and the knowledge they have gathered in courses to produce an extensive piece of academic work, such as a Journal Article, Position Paper, Research Report or a Policy Analysis.

We offer selected students the opportunity of undertaking a six-month Undergraduate Research Project, under the supervision of an active researcher at Maastricht University. This project allows students to conduct independent research in the context of a professional research group, and provides those who are interested in research careers with valuable experience.

Capstone
All UCM students complete their studies by writing a Capstone, a bachelor's thesis. Under the guidance of a faculty member of Maastricht University, they produce a substantial piece of scholarship. This could be a research project, literature review, experimental study, analytical paper, philosophical treatise, or some other form of research. The Capstone enables students to express their individual academic profile and to demonstrate the academic level they have reached during their time at UCM.