Wittenborg University Blogs

WUP ?/5/2013 A BirdsEye View - Illegals in Holland - possibly a new source of national income, or the cause of a massive increase in costs and paper-work? - The current Dutch government is planning to make being illegal in the Netherlands a criminal offence with fines for all those caught, and prison sentences for those who don't pay on time! The basic idea is that making the notion of being illegal unpleasant will act as a deterrent. The proposals have sparked a wide and critical debate in the Netherlands, with a number of very prominent politicians publicly condemning the motion.

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WUP 27/4/2013 A Birdseyeview- Youth unemployment rising around the world - governments should take care of their higher education offerings - In the Netherlands, and in many developed countries of the West, youth unemployment has been steadily rising, however in developing countries this is also the case, and according to The Economist, in a recent publication, ('Generation jobless', 27th April 2013), two main factors are contributing to the rise in jobless youths. In the West it sees the slowdown combined with the very strict labour laws as a reason, and in the developing world it is the continuing population explosion. Although University graduates are much more likely to find employment than those youths who drop out of education at an early age, the recent trend of Universities offering non-specific, or generalist degree prograammes has also led to a higher number of graduates who find it difficult to find employment after their studies.

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WUP 6/4/2013 - Henk Penseel's Wittenborg Blog -"I'm not crazy" - One of my lecturers on the Msc International Event Management, Adam Jones, said that roughly spoken we had to spend ten times more time on reading than on listening to him. Well, we read a lot! This time about fundraising. Our group is trying to set up a fundraising event for a new Dutch foundation called Hoofdzaak (Headcase), which needs money for research about craniofacial abnormalities. Most of these congenital craniofacial defects are birth defects of the skull and the face, youngsters for instance with an abnormal upper jaw, eye sockets that are skewed.

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I wonder whether international students achieve more in life than students who didn't take that giant step in studying abroad . Have there been longitudinal studies? From my own experience as a teacher and lecturer in higher education, I think that students who do more than just study, so called extra curriculum activities, experience more and get more out of their life than those who just do their job. This is especially so for those who want to get a taste of different cultures.

A few times a year you may read somewhere that there is a possibility to make a trip as a student to another country, usually in a class-free period. Sometimes you also can get even some credits for it. Almost two years ago two colleagues and I accompanied two groups of students for a trip to Kenya. Our students received support from students of the MOI University in Eldoret, who also did this during their holiday. They still communicate via Facebook.

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WUP 12/3/2013 – Henk Penseel, MSc Event Management Student,  on Fundraising

You are not allowed to say It's generally known, without stating where you got the information from, when writing an academic paper. But if you write a blog I guess it's OK. So I consider it common knowledge that when you are looking for a new car , you seem to notice many more adverts  with cars in them than usual. Now that I’ve had lectures about sponsoring and fundraising my attention has fallen on this subject more frequently than before.

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WUP 7/2/13 - Daniel O'Connell on Increasing the employability factor.

According to a 2012 International Labour Organization (ILO) report, the number of jobless people around the world rose by 4 million in 2012 to 197 million, and is expected to grow further  -  indeed, as of this time of writing, that number has jumped to approx 205 million. Furthermore, as revealed by Global Employment Trends (2013), 6% of the world’s workforce was without a job in 2012, with long-term unemployment continuing to grow. Further data pointed out that a third of Europe's jobless had been without work for more than a year.

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WUP 10/01/13 - Henk Penseel's Wittenborg Blog - Natural born leader - Please read the title right. It's not the Natural Born Killers, the famous movie of Oliver Stone featuring Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis. If you read quickly, many do that quite often, you see something different than what is printed. A sentence further you recognize your mistake. It happens because there is so much to read that you scan most of what is written. But I really want to say something about what is natural (your dna), and what is learned by reading (carefully, not scanned). A natural leader makes quick decisions rightly most of the time within mille seconds. That's called quick, isn't it?

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Challenges ahead in 2013

In 2013 international higher education in Holland will be challenged at two different levels; maintaining the Netherlands’s ambition of being in the top of the worlds’ knowledge economies; and, dealing with the balance of the international higher education export commodity. - WUP - 07/01/12

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WUP 30/12/12 Wittenborg MSc Student, Henk Penseel on True leadership - My grandfather was founder of a sports club in Amsterdam of which he became chairman. My father, after a couple of years of being secretary in the board of that same sports club, was elected chairman after my granddad stopped. He stayed on voluntarily for more than two decades. After a few others who had the chairman position, I decided to run for chairman too. Before that I had some experience as a leader in sport teams and at school. Later in my work I was asked frequently to lead a team. During that time I was confronted for the first time to leadership trainings.

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Henk Penseel – on (and with) The Rolling Stones - “The Stones learnt from Altamont”. It's nice to dig into the past and to look at old scrapbooks, which I did to verify some facts when I wrote my previous blog. Then, I ran into pictures taken from the Rolling Stones. And last weekend I saw an HBO documentary about the fifty year old rock & roll band on television, which brought back recollections of their concert in The Hague in the Zuiderpark football stadium. When the group arrived at Schiphol airport I gave all the members a hand, and the first question Mick Jagger asked me was how many albums had been sold. I could guarantee him that they had exceeded the golden status.

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Blog: - Henk Penseel on the Summer of 77 and Linda Ronstadt - In the Summer of 1977 I met Linda Ronstadt, two months younger than I, a physical attractive country/rock singer. That's of course Linda, not me. She had already a career of a decade behind her, just recently with lots of success in America. Linda came over to The Netherlands to promote her latest album. Two years before she had a hit album in America, Heart Like A Wheel, that reached the first position in the charts, but this record (all vinyl)  was not successful in Europe. So when her new album, Simple Dreams, was released, her record company asked its European affiliates to come with creative ideas to sell her records (there were no cd's yet and the word 'download' had another meaning).

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WUP 09/12/12 - Henk Penseel on Fleetwood Mac on tour again. Actually it's a bad start to write: I read somewhere that Fleetwood Mac is going to tour again, while I'm supposed to become an academic. I really can't remember where I read it. Way back it was hard to verify information like this, but nowadays you just Google, which I did ..

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WUP 06/12/12 - Daniel O'Connell on Letterboxes and PDP. Yes, the PDP chap is back again, after a serious writer’s block that consisted of too many ideas swirling around too many serious subjects, and coupled with too little (word)space to help this Irishman make a decision and put a point or message across – whoever said PDP is just for students has not, in fact, become an adult yet!

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WUP 19/11/12 - Henk Penseel on Rod Stewart, still a soccer fan! : - Last week  there were three moments my attention was drawn to Rod Stewart. The first was the announcement that he is going to perform again in Amsterdam on June 12th next year. The second was an article in De Volkskrant about the release of his autobiography, Rod. And the third was when I watched flashes of the already legendary match Celtic versus Barcelona. The camera spotted Rod Stewart sitting in the crowd crying with joy over the victory by the Scots.

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WUP 02/11/2012 - Henk Penseel's Wittenborg Blog - on Image determines salary -Various groups of people often attribute themselves with a high status. If they are believed, these people are most likely better off than what they deserve. It is a sort of 'self-fulfilling prophesy'. Others would like to join such a group, because it will raise their status. Of course one has to do its utmost to be accepted. The group is promoting its image constantly, so the status and image of the persons in the group will rise and with it their corresponding salaries.

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WUP 29/10/12 - Every fall the weekly magazine Elsevier publishes a ranking of the Dutch universities and at the same time the Keuzegids (Choice Guide) is released, which come with a ranking too, based upon the yearly  held National Student Survey. Bottom line every year is that small universities score better than the big ones.

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WUP 23/10/12 - Henk Penseel's Wittenborg Blog on 'Do we forgive Lance Armstrong?' Sometimes you wonder how it is possible that some people could be adored, although they have done awful things. To which extent could you forgive people? Michelle Martin for instance, the ex-wife of pedophile murderer Dutroux in Belgium. A few months back I saw a documentary on Dutch television that there are still many Russian longing back to the (good old?) time that Stalin ruled the Soviet Republics.

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WUP 20/10/12 Henk Penseel's Wittenborg Blog: on Money & Power - Money makes the world go round and money gives people power. Sometimes direct, sometimes indirect, or in the long term. How powerful was Holland in the 17th century with its VOC (United East Indian Company)? The word ethics was not in the vocabulary of the gentlemen running this enterprise for which you could already buy stocks on the Amsterdam stock exchange. But the money that came in, made Amsterdam more than a decade the centre of the world.

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WUP 13/10/2012 | When you are applying for a job, speaking without a particular accent helps, but also a name might do the trick. Especially in the Benelux. You will have more status when your name is Van Vollenhove tot den Oever than just plain Smit. For an English speaking person Van could be a Christian name, like Van Morrison, the Irish singer. In Dutch Van is mostly the first part of a surname, which you write separately from the part that follows, so it is Van Vollenhoven. Language English

WUP 08/10/12 Henk Penseel's Wittenborg Blog: on Motivation - Seldom do parents say about their child: It's a pity. He has the motivation, but he is plain stupid. No, most parents say something else, like: Oh, he is so able and intelligent, but he lacks a bit of motivation. In other words: he is definitely not dumb, but he needs more motivation, then he will pass his exams.

Recently the University Utrecht was in the news, because they have set up a compulsory 'matching procedure' for starting Bachelor students, hoping that students choose the right study and that there won't be so much failures.

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