Faculties

Universities have structured their education and their practice of science into faculties. When it was founded in 1927, the Roman Catholic Business School was in fact a single faculty, that of economic sciences. In the spirit of the College’s founding fathers, the Tilburg education and research curricula in economics took a wide perspective and comprised ethical, philosophical, sociological, behavioral and legal aspects. It was not until 1963 that this scientific practice called for the establishment of specialized faculties: those of Law and of Social Sciences. The Faculty of Philosophy was to follow later, as were the Faculties of Philosophy, Theology, Psychology (a sub-faculty), the Arts and the Humanities.

Changing names

The faculties’ names and their abbreviations have changed over the years, usually in consequence of strategy- or marketing-based considerations. All faculty names have been English names since 2012. The Faculty of Economic Sciences (FEW) became the Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences (FEB) and is now called the Tilburg School for Economics and Management (TiSEM). The Faculty of Law is now the Tilburg Law School (TLS). The Social Faculty was initially called the Sub-Faculty of Socio-Cultural Sciences (SCW), joined by the Sub-Faculty of Psychology in 1972. As of 1987, these two sub-faculties together were renamed the Faculty of Social Sciences (FSW), which is now the Tilburg School for Social and Behavioral Studies (TSB). The current Tilburg School for Humanities (TSH) was previously called the Faculty of Humanities, a faculty that was the outcome of a merger of the Faculty of Philosophy (FWW), the Faculty of Communication and Culture (FCC) and the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies (FTR). The FCC was the upshot of a name change following in the wake of an Arts Faculty reorganization in 2005. The current Tilburg School of Catholic Theology (since 2007) was previously called the Faculty of Catholic Theology, fusing parts of the Tilburg and Utrecht Catholic theological faculties.

Business school

The Tilburg campus also accommodates the TIAS School for Business and Society, founded in 1986 and grown over the years into an eminent business school. In an academic sense, TIAS is a Tilburg University faculty, but in a formal sense, it is a private company that depends on market forces for its survival. Strategic discussions in 2013-2014 suggested that Tilburg University might be profiled as the Tilburg School for Law and Economics, but this met with opposition, causing the faculties to remain as they were, but now joined under the shared motto of “Understanding Society.” Expansion arrived in 2016, with the Jheronimus Academy of Data Sciences (JADS) in Den Bosch, the University College Tilburg (the successor of Liberal Arts and Sciences) and the Tilburg School of Governance. These recent schools are none of them faculties in any formal sense, but they do express the University’s ambition to profile itself with multidisciplinary education and research on these relevant social themes.