The dropout rate among students of Automotive has proven to be relatively high, at about 40 percent. According to Sjoerd Hulshof, Program Director of Electrical Engineering, many students drop the program because it fails to meet their expectations. This is due, on the one hand, to the recruitment information, and on the other to the curriculum design. Hulshof explains, “Students often don't expect to spend as much time on Electrical Engineering as they do. But Automotive falls under the Electrical Engineering program and with good reason. The knowledge that students acquire in the Electrical Engineering field is put to good use in the Automotive major."

"Some students have the erroneous idea that there is a lot of tinkering with cars involved," continues Hulshof. "We will be making it even clearer in the course literature what students can expect of us.” That this might reduce student intake is not something the Program Director sees as a problem “I would rather that eighty students start the course and sixty continue than to see a hundred start and fifty drop out.”

Similarly, the curriculum of the major, which was launched in 2011, will be amended. The plan is to start as early as September 2017 with a revised first year. The 'new' second and third years will then follow in 2018 and 2019 respectively. While the changes to those latter years have not yet been finalized, proposals are on the table. “Greater coherence is needed," says Hulshof. "Students are not experiencing enough connection between courses. The fragmentation of subjects across different courses is not optimal. Furthermore, it is debatable whether some of the electives we are currently offering shouldn't in fact be majors in their own right. It has been proposed that in the second year we should offer two parallel tracks, each consisting of two or three courses in particular areas of application.”

According to Hulshof, the issue of whether the Automotive Bachelor's program should become a separate accredited program has also been discussed. But to date at least that proposal has bitten the dust. It is not something that Hulshof supports. ”Perhaps in the future, but first we need to get the program in better shape.”