Maintaining a high quality nuclear engineering programme: future challenges for the Belgian Nuclear higher Education Network

The Belgian Nuclear higher Education Network (BNEN) is a master-after-master academic programme in nuclear engineering, organised through a consortium of six Belgian universities and SCK•CEN, the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre. This condensed (60 ECTS in one year, including a master thesis) programme allows the students to acquire all necessary scientific and technical background and skills to develop a career in the field of nuclear applications. Already running for 10 years, BNEN is a good example of cross-border collaboration between universities, research institutions and industry. In order to maintain a high quality academic programme, BNEN faces a number of challenges such as the renewal of the inter-university agreement, the modification of its admission criteria and the implementation of novel teaching methods, among others. In the framework of an official accreditation process, the BNEN steering committee recently wrote a Self-Assessment Report (SAR) describing the different strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the BNEN programme. In this paper, the results of the accreditation process will be highlighted, together with the different actions BNEN has planned in order to preserve its high educational standards of an international master-after-master programme.