Although The Netherlands is a multicultural society, where many nationalities live together, the last Dutch government tried to limit in many ways the entrance of foreigners into this country. When foreigners request access to participate in an educational program only here available and it is not specifically state sanctioned, non Europeans are systematically refused entrance for a longer period.

The human right to education and to freedom of education has been confirmed in
many international agreements that the Dutch government has signed. Numerous international declarations have also acknowledged the importance of these human rights. Art. 2 of the 1st addendum of the European Human Rights Convention (EHRC) of 4-11-1950 guarantees:
“The right to education must not be refused to anybody. When executing the duties
taken on in the field of education and teaching the state has to respect the right of the
parents to ensure the education and teaching within the parents’ religious and
philosophical beliefs.”
These rights are enforceable at the European Court of Justice. The human right to freedom of schooling is even less respected than the general human right to education. This shows up particularly in relation to schools run by independent bodies, like ours.

What is important here is the first sentence of the declarations article: “The right to education must not be refused to anybody”. It means that everybody should be able to receive the education they prefer. But it also means that education should be made freely available to anybody if that education has special merits, even in the case when that education might or might not support the general policy/ideology of the state .
But what is actually happening? Many people from all over the world want to come and study Chinese medicine with us. Our program has some special merits that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. Therefor people want to come to the International Oriental College in Amsterdam because we offer a unique educational program that combines the best of western cultural scientific achievements with traditional Chinese cultural scientific achievements. Not only is it at University level, but also it is the only truly scientific and traditional educational program on Chinese cultural medicine available, based, as it was meant to be, on self cultivation and research. The program is completely individualized, it uses the ECTS credit system of the EU ruling bodies, it also complies with the general law in the Netherlands concerning study weight, even does more, and it allows for continuous critical research of Chinese medicine values so as that Chinese medicine practice can eventually fully contribute its best to modern western societies. It is not intellectually dependable on Chinese communist party policies concerning Chinese medicine modernization too, so politically our program is independent either way.
So, we comply to all the rules and regulations that have been made for schools and schooling, yet we are still a private school. Other private schools in the Netherlands but also elsewhere in the world (Princeton in the USA for instance) have already proven that the most important thing in schooling is quality. That is what we offer. Independence, like Princeton and before long in the Netherlands … also stated is also a guarantee for quality.

The Dutch government and institutions could show their recognition of their interest and their concern for quality of schooling, but also their intent to stand for an openminded attitude concerning foreigners, by supplying student Visa for international students. Yet they choose to enforce the many strict regulations that are made to limit the entrance of foreigners. Even for guest teachers from China it is hard, sometimes impossible to get a proper Visa.

For us to receive recognition as an “official” university seems the only option, although it could make us also intellectually more dependent on state sanctions. Also this process is a long, costly and tedious project, ruled by many laws and regulations.

This means that the only option for foreign students is to come over one or two times a year for maximal as long as a tourist visa will permit. We, contrary to the Dutch government, are flexible. So we adjusted our program, without losing the quality of it, to make it possible for foreign students to study in this way. We organized our program in intense blocks of 3 months, that allow for 3 months of self study and internet contact in preparation of finalizing each module as well as starting new ones.

1. The Dutch government only sponsors educational institutes that it can use for its economic planning
2. This refers to the form of academic studies in the west as well as the methods of science -that are developed  to make knowledge comply with the intrinsic values of western culture

Want to know more?
Mail us at . Persistence and never giving up is one feature that you learn in our study. For foreign students all the more so, given the above.



For more informations:
Email:
tel: (+31) 20 4081228
     (+31) 20 4081229
     (+31) 653 69 53 52