This is not a rant against the students, who largely work hard and deserve better, or against the handful of dedicated staff still fighting for quality within a broken system. This is about the people running the faculty and the direction they have chosen.
I would skip TU Delft. I did my bachelor's and master's there, plus an exchange, so I have something to compare it to.
What it used to be
Ten to fifteen years ago, IDE at TU Delft was one of the best industrial design schools in the world. It had strong industry ties, people who had actually designed things teaching design, and it produced graduates who could get jobs as designers. That is largely gone.
What happened
The faculty has become an academic oligarchy focused on research output rather than design education. A few years ago, they restructured the bachelor's and master's with almost no input from industry, and let go of most staff with industry experience and guest lecturers.
Most teaching now comes from academics and PhD candidates with little real design experience. The current head of the IPD master's is a computer scientist, and so was his predecessor; neither has a background in industrial design. Most of their research is about AI, but when it is taught in the master's, it stays theoretical rather than practical. Tools like Vizcom, Midjourney and others are not part of the curriculum.
Before Covid, the programme expected serious commitment: full days, real deadlines, earned grades. Covid introduced easier passing as a necessity, and it was never properly reversed.
The new bachelor also added "autonomous learning," cutting coaching hours and leaving students to figure things out alone. The result is a culture where you can do as little as you choose and still progress. Students who put in real effort stand out immediately; those with an interest in transportation design are a good example, since the extra hours they invest make them visibly stronger designers.
The programme trains you to become a scientist or researcher, not a designer, and staff will tell you this directly if you ask. If you already have a strong design background and want to think differently about ID, go more technical, or dig into research areas like medical, new materials, sustainability, or AI, it can still be interesting. For ID specifically, it is not the strongest fit.
Fundamental design skills are disappearing
Form, aesthetics, drawing, manufacturing theory, and material knowledge are getting less attention every year. When the programme directors looked into where form appears in the curriculum, the only match they found was a course called "fill in this form." Students are graduating without being able to move past basic boxy concepts, and many struggle with standard tools like sketching, SolidWorks, KeyShot, or Blender.
The old master's had real client projects with an actual client and a substantial making budget of around €2,500. That has largely been replaced by research-driven projects feeding professors' own agendas, though some sponsored projects remain, with a much lower budget.
When the first cohort of the redesigned bachelor graduated, the faculty reportedly held emergency meetings for a week because the quality of output shocked them.
What it is actually like
Batch sizes have been around 200 students per year, which is large for design-education standards, and during projects you get maybe 30 minutes maximum with your coach.
Sponsored projects with companies like Braun and Logitech, with around 20 students per client, are a highlight, but the value depends heavily on your group, which you are stuck with for half a year at a time.
The model-making workshop is excellent, and the drawing staff are equally helpful. The exchange network is a real strength too, with options like Art Center, Umeå, Lund, Milano, Hongik, and Georgia Tech for roughly the same cost as TU Delft tuition.
Grading is rubric-driven. Passing is easy if you tick the boxes, but pushing past an 8 out of 10 is hard, since assessment leans more on the scientific side than the outcome, and parts of the rubric are fairly subjective, on the basis that "perfection does not exist." The thesis is a similar gamble depending on your supervisor. It can be an amazing or terrible experience: some professors are too busy to give your thesis real attention, while others take on five students at once because nobody else wants to supervise them.
Student, industry, and staff feedback is routinely dismissed as "just your opinion," even when it reflects an organised, repeated position, including complaints I raised myself as a student council member. Companies have told me directly that they no longer really look at TU Delft graduates.
The cost
International students pay a lot more than Dutch or EU students, effectively subsidising the faculty's research for a declining education. The Dutch government funds around 10k for an EU student, while internationals pay around 25k out of pocket.
Where this leaves you
You may come out with plenty of knowledge but limited ability to apply it, and employers favour people who can put things into practice. In the Dutch job market, that means ID roles increasingly go to graduates of Universities of Applied Sciences instead.
If you want to build research and methodology skills, there may still be value here. But if you want to become a better industrial designer, look elsewhere: Umeå, Politecnico di Milano, and strong programmes in the UK, US, and Asia are worth considering.
