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 Harmonisation of Faculties, Focus in Support, Behaviour & Culture and Strengthening Financial Function.
- The aim is a financially healthy university that can continue to invest in education, research and impact.
What is happening now?
From plans to implementation
Over the past period, we have explored how our organisation can operate more effectively and sustainably, and analysed our financial outlook. In addition, we worked on our mission, vision, strategic direction and ambitions for the coming period. Based on this work, we are currently working in a transition phase in which we implement organisational improvements. We focus on two transitions:
- Evolving into a 4th generation university
- Operating as one unified community and organisation
What this means for you
The transition phase primarily focuses on how we organise our work and how we use our resources. For employees, this may mean:
- Changes in the way we are organised
- Clearer prioritisation of activities
- Changes in certain processes or workflows
At the same time, UT continues to invest in education, research and societal impact. The aim is not only to manage costs, but also to strengthen the university for the future. Employees remain closely involved through their faculties, service departments and representative bodies.
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
This 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
- Implementing improvements along the way
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. Not everything can be tackled at once. We will prioritise the elaboration and implementation. Currently, we are starting to implement some recommendations.
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 Bi-Monthly of 18 June 2026, given by the EB to managers, the taskforce already shared the following slides:
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 Harmonisation of Faculties, harmonising educational support processes and research support processes (Focus in Support), Behaviour & Culture and organisational embedding of previously called interfaculty units.
The team helps the organisation to:
- Coordinate implementation of improvement measures
- Support faculties and services where needed during the implementation phase
- Monitor progress and identify opportunities for adjustment
In case of questions, please do not hesitate to reach out via email or contact us.
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. Vinod Subramaniam clarified the principles in the Seven principles explainer video.
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:
Reinventing UT: five clusters and three working groups
Within this process, several clusters explored opportunities for improvement in different parts of the organisation, including:
- Future-proof Education
- Future-proof Research & Innovation
- Interfaculty units
- Towards an effective and efficient infrastructure
- Effective and efficient support processes
Their proposals and work form the basis for the current transition phase.
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. If you still have a question, please let us know via info@utwente.nl.
Below is an overview of the most relevant news items on this topic.
- 24 Mar, 2026Refocus for UT’s DesignLab on education and student learning
- 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