Universiteit Leiden

I studied Archaeology at Leiden as a first-generation, neurodivergent, international student from an immigrant working-class background. Tuition and housing were struggles. As for the facilities: the library is decent most labs most labs are limited to visual analysis with almost no opportunities for bio-chemical or direct research. The exams mostly consist out of standardized multiple-choice exams which disadvantage neurodivergent students, and actual mentorship is non-existent.
Course selection still is limited and follows a “first-come-first serve” mentality which is unprofessional and limiting the students. Internships and field schools are often traumatic experiences for the students . The Archaeology student association TERRA was socially toxic during my time, dominated by attention-seeking bullies who slandered and exploited fellow students. Marginalized voices: including mine (because yes, the working class and intra-European immigrants also count as marginalized), were repeatedly silenced, and DEI committees and student support staff often failed to protect students while sometimes engaging in exclusionary or discriminatory (even racist) behaviour themselves. People decorate themselves with topics of social justice and redefining it in a way so that it only serves them. This raises significant questions about the state of affirmative action at a neoliberal/ conservative university that publicly claims to value inclusion.
Open discussion of Marxism and leftist perspectives is actively discouraged, making it clear that critical engagement with inequality is unwelcome in the faculty.
Leiden is the perfect environment for rich, conservative students who failed to get into Oxford or Cambridge. They have failed so hard that they now have to step on the people from below, taking opportunities from ordinary people and the proletariat. The system reproduces inequality, elitism, and capitalist logic at every turn, and field schools, internships, TERRA, and other social structures often reinforce this hierarchy.
“The higher nobility struggles against the monarchy, the bureaucrat against the nobility, and the bourgeois against them all, while the proletariat already begins to find itself struggling against the bourgeoisie.” —Marx, 1844