Qualla: Saxion University of Applied Sciences

Saxion University of Applied Sciences: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Apdency, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sometime in the late 1470s a young boy from Rotterdam named Desiderius Erasmus walked the streets of Deventer on his way to lessons. He would later become the most influential humanist scholar of his era and one of the foundational minds of the European Renaissance. The schools he attended in Deventer were part of a centuries-long tradition of learning in this east Dutch book city, and the line from those medieval classrooms runs - thinly, but recognizably - to Saxion University of Applied Sciences, today a 27,000-student institution with campuses in Enschede, Deventer, and Apeldoorn. Saxion's actual founding date is 1998, when two existing hogescholen merged, but the institution's official history reaches back through Deventer's 17th-century Athenaeum Illustre to the medieval schools that taught Erasmus his Latin.

Image: Apdency | CC BY-SA 3.0

Saxion University of Applied Sciences: A City of Books

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jessicajoins, CC BY-SA 4.0. Deventer earned its reputation as a Dutch city of books slowly, over centuries. It became a major Hanseatic trading center in the medieval period and an early printing town, and the schools that grew around its churches drew students from across northwestern Europe. The Athenaeum...

Image: Jessicajoins | CC BY-SA 4.0

Saxion University of Applied Sciences: Textile Money, Technical Schools

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Edson Hiroshi Aoki, Public domain. Twente's other contribution to Saxion's DNA comes from industry, not scholarship. The Twente Industrial and Trade School was founded in 1864 with money from the region's textile barons - the families who had built fortunes on cotton mills clustered around Enschede and Hengelo and...

Image: Edson Hiroshi Aoki | Public domain

Saxion University of Applied Sciences: The 1998 Merger

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit RozanneHarleman, CC BY-SA 4.0. Saxion in its present form was born on 1 January 1998, when the Hogeschool Enschede and the Rijkshogeschool IJselland merged under the management foundation Stichting Hogescholen Oost-Nederland. The new institution took the name Saxion in 2000 - a reference to the Saxons, the Ger...

Image: RozanneHarleman | CC BY-SA 4.0

Saxion University of Applied Sciences: Living Technology

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mark92 at nl.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. Saxion's research focus is captured in a phrase the institution uses repeatedly: living technology. The idea is technology that integrates with the human body, the built environment, and the natural world - smart textiles, medical devices, sustainable construction materials, sens...

Image: Mark92 at nl.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Saxion University of Applied Sciences: Three Cities, One School

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michielverbeek, CC BY-SA 3.0 nl. Each campus has its own character. Deventer's Saxion building, designed by the Dutch architect Paul Dirks, sits a few minutes from the old town and the city's arts district - a striking modern structure dropped near streets where Erasmus may once have walked. Apeldoorn's campus i...

Image: Michielverbeek | CC BY-SA 3.0 nl