The Vrije Universiteit is a university in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

The Vrije Universiteit should not be confused with the University of Amsterdam. The name is often abbrevated as VU. It is the university of the Vereniging voor Christelijk Wetenschappelijk Onderwijs (Association for Christian Scientific Education).

The association was founded in 1880, and headed by Abraham Kuyper, as the first protestant university. Vrije Universiteit literally means Free University to signify freedom from government and church. The education itself however, is not free of cost; like all accredited universities in The Netherlands students pay a (government determined) fee, while students receive a student loan from government as well.

About 17,000 students (2004) attend the university, with 2,200 scientific employees, and 1,600 non-scientific employees.

Notable faculty

• Jan Peter Balkenende, the current Prime Minister of the Netherlands, was a special professor of "Christian-Social Thinking".
• Andrew S. Tanenbaum, professor of Computer Science who wrote the Minix operating system and the Amoeba distributed operating system. He is the author of the textbooks: Computer Networks, Operating Systems: Design and Implementation, and Modern Operating Systems.
• Earth Sciencis professor Jan Smit was one of the people who helped thought up the now well accepted theory of the ending of the Dinosaur age. That is, the impact of the meteor near Mexico (about 65 miljon years ago).

Notable graduates

• Wouter Bos, party leader of the Dutch Social Democrats studied at the VU
• Pim Fortuyn, the assassinated party leader of the LPF studied sociology at the VU and was a professor there as well.
• Gerrit Zalm, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the cabinet Kok II, Balkenende I and II, also studied economics at the VU.

External links

• Vrije Universiteit Website