Conforming to the main guidelines of the FGw strategic plan, the Faculty of Humanities will in the coming years strive to consolidate both the inflow of academic talent and the qualitative improvement of education and research. Although the last decade has seen the humanities experiencing increased interest from students and aspiring researchers alike, this increase has failed to lead to a growth in permanent staff. The Faculty staff’s teaching, researching and supervising capacities have hereby been stretched to their very maximum. Without substantial growth in direct funding, the Faculty will thus be unable to provide the quality and service which UvA students have become accustomed to. That is why the FGw will shift its focus from quantitative expansion to the attainment of excellence in teaching, research and service provision. The precise manner in which the Faculty will pursue these aims is outlined in paragraphs two to nine of the Policy and Management Covenant 2009-2012.  

The Faculty of Humanties is proud of being a faculty which offers a broad variety of specialist study programmes in fields such as language and literature, history, media, arts and culture. Historically speaking, the Faculty practices both its teaching and researching activities with a traditionally European focus and cosmopolitan outlook. The Faculty seeks to maintain the large variety of specialised programmes on offer and thereby enable students to combine their interest in different academic fields and subsequently progress more easily to other, higher level study programmes. To achieve this, the Faculty will:

• give more attention to the success of student careers by holding intake discussions, monitoring students (especially 1st year students) and providing better advice during the master’s phase;
• strive to make the faculty organisation more transparent, efficient and flexible.

In fulfilling these goals, the Faculty will join forces with other Dutch humanities faculties in ensuring that the Bachelor and Master study programmes on offer are managed more efficiently. A special point of concern is the unacceptably high dropout rate and the low level of return for certain programmes. Streamlining programmes and making them more profitable needs to be a joint Faculty/University endeavor performed in conjunction with sister faculties and the Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders (NVAO). Synergy between the different study programmes, as well as the optimisation of the programmes on offer (both at faculty and national level), are issues which will dominate the soon to be established ‘schools’ (College of Humanities and Graduate of Humanities). These will be created before 2010 and will improve the streamlining of the study programmes on offer.

The Faculty of Humanities has an above average success rate when it comes to attracting non-governmental funding. During the coming years, the Faculty will however need to go on and attract a larger part of its research trainees from these resources. Due to financial constraints, the Faculty will temporarily not be able to employ new researchers from government allocated funds. A part of the financing meant for regular doctoral programmes will be allocated to those PhD positions attracted from indirect government funding. Added to these measures, the Faculty will also, when possible, enlarge the share of resources originating from indirect government funding by pooling researchers together in important research themes.

The Faculty of Humanities has chosen the following research themes:

1. Cultural Heritage and Identities (Culturele Erfgoed en Identiteit);
2. Cultural Transformations and Globalisation (Culturele Transformaties en Globalisering);
3. Cognitive Modelling & Learnability (Cognitieve modellen en leerbaarheid – interfacultair);

Because of budgetary constraints, the FGw will not be able to allocate government funds to the aforementioned research themes during the first two years. The exception being the research theme Cognitive Modeling & Learnability, for which the Faculty has already made commitments which must be honoured.

The Faculty realises that in order to attain its goal of becoming the most attractive humanities faculty in the Netherlands for researchers and students alike, an optimal level of service provision is vital. Not only will lecturers and researchers perform better when they are adequately supported, students will also attain better results when they find themselves studying in an educational environment characterised by uniform procedures, properly informed supporting staff and excellent facilities (i.e. modern computers, well designed lecture halls etc.). In recent years the UvA has positively addressed issues such as the procurement of educational infrastructure, while the Faculty has in turn managed to simplify some of its procedures. While these are laudable achievements, much room for improvement still remains. The Faculty will strive to ensure better results in areas like student assistance, service provision and the optimisation of supportive processes, all of which must translate into higher satisfactory scores in the various KPI’s  relating to the quality of provisions.