Hogeschool Gent

Established in 1995, University College Ghent is the outcome of two successful mergers in which fourteen institutions of higher education were involved. The first merger took place in 1995 when 13 university colleges merged and University College Ghent was founded. Five colleges belonged to the city of Ghent, the other 8 to the state school system of the Flemish Community. Most of the university colleges were located in Ghent, but there was also one institution in Aalst and a Faculty of the Erasmus University College in Brussels. Six years later, in 2001, University College Ghent merged with the university college of the Province of East-Flanders. Many of the former independent colleges had been leaders in higher education for decades or even longer (our Faculty of Fine Arts celebrated its 250th anniversary in 2001) and every single one of them puts in first-class expertise. HoGent's goal is to link, mix and interconnect this formidable range of assets in order to create surplus value in the fields of education, applied research, services and development of the arts. HoGent is one of 22 university colleges ('hogescholen') in Flanders. HoGent has more than 14.000 students, ca. 1,200 staff members. This critical mass allows us to offer additional services and opportunities, such as professional units for communication, culture and internationalisation. HoGent is particularly proud to have the widest range of subjects on offer, in fact almost anything from the fine arts to engineering sciences and from music to biotechnology. HoGent is located in Ghent, the largest student town (roughly 65.000 students) where you can also find the second largest university (Ghent University, 32.000 students). Together, Ghent University and the University college Ghent make up for 75 % of all students in Ghent. Although University College Ghent already had a strong research tradition in some areas and boasted a number of research groups of international excellence, the number of researchers at University College Ghent has been increasing ever since the Bologna Declaration and the start of the academisation process. Currently, nearly 171 researchers are actively involved in more than 97 research projects.

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