This page brings together all essential information about UT's transition process towards the ambitions described in our institutional plan The Entrepreneurial University: Stronger Together. Here you’ll find what is changing, why these decisions are being made, and how they affect you. Through news items on the service portal, we inform about the current situation and its impact on UT and everyone who works or studies here. At the bottom of this page, you will find an overview of all messages and plans. Finally, there is a FAQ where you will find answers to frequently asked questions.
What you need to know
- The University of Twente established a new institutional plan, The Entrepreneurial University: Stronger Together, that guides our ambitions in education, research and societal impact for the coming years.
- To enable this strategic direction, we are strengthening our organisational and financial foundations.
- Several organisational improvements are currently being implemented, including Harmonising Faculties, Focus in Support, Behaviour & Culture and Strengthening Financial Function.
What is happening now?
From plans to implementation
Currently, we are working in a transition phase in which we implement organisational improvements. We focus on two transitions:
- Evolve into a 4th generation university
- Operate more as a single community and organisation
At the same time, we must become more resilient as a university. The aim is not only to remain financially sound, but also to strengthen our university for the future.
What this means for you
The transition phase primarily focuses on how we organise our work and how we use our resources. This may mean, among others:
- For students: more flexibly-structured education, more value to social engagements and entrepreneurship, and more participation from learnes and students from outside UT.
- For colleagues: work more as one UT community, more value to group performance, more attention to valuing other forms of academic and supporting performance.
- For leaders: take responsibility and create clarity within and outside UT about responsibility, how we do things, and when we consider things to be going well.
What we should do now as UT community
The exact changes that are needed differ per person. However, you are encouraged to:
- For students: actively engage beyond your study programme (e.g., join cross-UT projects, co-create initiatives).
- For colleagues: work across teams and disciplines, recognise and value diverse contributions (teaching, support, collaboration), and prioritise collective outcomes over individual performance.
- For leaders: create an inclusive environment, communicate consistently, standardise ways of working - clarify roles, responsibilities and success criteria.
Where we are heading: stronger together
To achieve our goals as a university, we have launched a number of improvement initiatives (among others, Strengthening Financial Function, Harmonisation of Faculties, Focus in Support, Behaviour & Culture). These initiatives come together in the institutional plan The Entrepreneurial University: Stronger Together. The institutional plan outlines our strategy for the upcoming years. It builds on our strong points, while also sharpening our course to address challenges.
Strengthening financial function
The SFF initiative is about improving the quality of financial services/processes within the whole UT.
- Harmonising the roles, functions, responsibilities and working methods (e.g. working standards and instructions)
- Improving effective way of working together (e.g. effective meetings, knowledge-sharing and teamwork finance colleagues)
- Clear management on the whole chain of financial services
harmonising Faculties
In 2025, a plan for uniformly organised faculties was created by the faculty boards. The final version of this proposal is now available for UT colleagues, after an editorial edit executed in June 2026. Please note, this proposal was completed at the beginning of this year. It was adapted and discussed by various governing bodies at UT. Naturally, various ideas and dates mentioned in the proposal were adjusted based on new insights during the process.
Each faculty is in a different phase of the harmonisation process, as they are currently all organised in different ways. For each faculty, faculty-specific information is available:
- BMS information on Harmonising Faculties
- EEMCS information on Harmonising Faculties
- ET information on Harmonising Faculties
- ITC information on Harmonising Faculties
- S&T information on Harmonising Faculties
To streamline the harmonisation processes, each faculty established a faculty transition team. These teams are working on necessary adjustments and implementation of the plan for each of the faculties.
BMS faculty transition team [currently: exploration team]
At BMS, a team is working on exploration during the first phase.
Aligned communication advisor:
ET faculty transition team
Aligned communication advisor:
EEMCS faculty transition team
Aligned communication advisor:
ITC faculty transition team
Aligned communication advisor:
S&T faculty transition team
Aligned communication advisor:
Focus in support
One of UT’s goals is to provide services that work well across all faculties and departments, staying reliable, efficient, and suited to their purpose. Our organisation should be flexible and agile, with clear roles and responsibilities for the future. Therefore, recommendations were delivered at the end of 2025 to achieve this goal. Currently, implementation of some of the recommendations has started.
Behaviour & Culture
The change we are going through depends for a large part on our behaviour and the culture we create together. In 2025, a project group focused on this topic. In May 2026, a taskforce was initiated, focusing on practical initiatives. More information will follow shortly. During the last Bi-Monthly Update, given by the Executive Board to UT managers, the taskforce already shared some information.
Transition support team
To support various trajectories in this phase, a UT broad Transition Support Team has been established. This team helps faculties and service departments translate proposals and plans into practical implementation, specifically for Harmonising Faculties, Focus in Support, Behaviour & Culture and organisational embedding of previously called interfaculty units. They focus on coordination, support for faculties and services, monitoring progress and identifying opportunities for adjustment. In case of questions, you can send an email to the Transition Support Team or ask one of the members.
What colleagues are part of the Transition Support Team?
What guides our decisions
Seven principles - ensuring our ut dna
The Strategic Board (Executive Board, deans and scientific directors) translated the vision for the future into seven UT principles to help us assuring our ‘DNA’ in the transition process to become a future proof UT. You can read them on page 17 of our institutional plan or download them underneath.
How this transition started
The institional plan and accompanying transition build on earlier work within the university, called Reinventing UT. During the Reinventing UT programme, covering part of 2024 and 2025, several analyses and discussions were conducted about UT’s financial outlook and organisational development. These resulted into concrete plans and recommendations aimed at improving efficiency, collaboration and financial sustainability. This work builds upon a position paper written in 2024:
Questions we hear from colleagues
Below you will find an overview of the most frequently asked questions, because these may be questions that you also have.
Below is an overview of the most relevant news items on this topic.
- 23 Jul, 2026Strengthening Financial Function moves to next phase
- 2 Jul, 2026Executive Board announces intended reorganisation of DesignLab
- 19 Feb, 2026Organisational development enters a new phase; transition support team launched
- 5 Dec, 2025Budget 2026: from recovery to a sustainable course
- 15 Sep, 2025Successful Future UT sessions
- 26 Mar, 2025ITC faculty announces plans for financially healthy future, reorganisation inevitable
- 15 Feb, 2025University College Twente starts reorganisation as a result of ending ATLAS program
- 13 Dec, 2024National budget cuts to higher education partially reversed; still major impact
- 18 Sep, 2024Major concerns over announced budget cuts to higher education and science
- 9 Sep, 2024UT phases out Technology and Liberal Arts and Sciences (ATLAS) bachelor's programme
- 6 Sep, 2024TNW Faculty announces reorganisation
- 8 Nov, 2023Summary: University of Twente's financial challenges
- 21 Jun, 2023Spring Memorandum: University of Twente faces financial challenges