I amsterdam - Innovations in Learning

Athenaeum Illustre 
In 1632, the Athenaeum Illustre was founded in Amsterdam to educate students in Trade and Philosophy. As the establishment was not yet a proper university, lessons were generally given in the professors' homes. Until the nineteenth century, the Athenaeum remained a small institution with no more than 250 students and eight teachers. In 1877, the situation changed when the Athenaeum Illustre became the Universiteit van Amsterdam and was permitted to confer the highest educational degrees. In 1900, there were 900 students at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. This figure had risen to 2,500 by 1935, and to 7,500 by 1960. More fields of study and research were introduced, and new university departments were established. Nowadays, over 22,000 students attend the Universiteit van Amsterdam. From Trade and Philosophy, the original Athenaeum Illustre has expanded into a comprehensive university featuring almost sixty disciplinary fields with the exception of the field of technology.

Vrij Universiteit (VU) 
Statesman and theologian Abraham Kuyper founded his Vrije Universiteit (VU University Amsterdam) in 1880 as a private initiative: the first Dutch university not controlled by church or state. For many years it was maintained solely by private donations; supporters would collect coins in special VU tins. Yet the institution grew steadily – from just five students and five professors in 1880 to more than 19,000 students and 4000 staff today. But all still on one campus, to make cooperation across subject boundaries easier.

The VU University Amsterdam is known for its high-quality tuition and cutting-edge academic investigation, which attracts prominent lecturers from the Netherlands and abroad. Astronaut André Kuipers, for instance, lectures on the physics of life and has taken up a position as Professor of Space Travel and Medicine. And many leading figures in Dutch society are VU University graduates, including current Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende and both Deputy Prime Ministers, Wouter Bos and André Rouvoet. The research at VU University focuses on social involvement: life sciences, health and disease, economics and society, to name but a few. The VU University also has its own teaching hospital, the VU University Medical Center (VUmc), situated on the campus.

KNAW
The Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), which exchanges publications with some 500 scientific institutions throughout the world, has been located since 1812 in the 17th-century house formerly owned by the Trip family cannon dealers. With one hundred kilometres of shelving, Amsterdam University Library on Singel is the largest library in the Netherlands. It has some four million books, 160 medieval and 70,000 modern manuscripts, 500,000 letters and 135,000 maps. The library's first catalogue dates from 1622. Amsterdam is also home to one of the world's richest libraries in the field of esoteric thought, the 'Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica'.

Science and Technology Centre
Amsterdam continues to create educational opportunity, recently opening the six large research institutions making up the Watergraafsmeer Science and Technology Centre, a hotbed of research and innovation as part of the Science Park Amsterdam. New projects have recently created about 208,000 square metres of office and business space as well as 145,800 square metres for the University of Amsterdam and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), providing sufficient space for 10,000 workers and study facilities for 2,800 students and visitors.