
Bachelor Technical Computer Science
Enschede, Netherlands
DURATION
3 Years
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Full time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
Request application deadline
EARLIEST START DATE
Sep 2025
TUITION FEES
EUR 12,875 / per year *
STUDY FORMAT
On-Campus
* EUR 2,530┃for EU/EEA students
Introduction
Use your fascination for computers and technology to impact business and society.
Are you fascinated by computers, the science behind them, and what you can do with them? Do you enjoy programming, or are you eager to get started with it? Would you like to study computer science, while also gaining expertise in other essential fields, such as electrical engineering or business information technology? Do you see yourself becoming a technical computer scientist committed to societal improvements, for example in healthcare, finance, or the environment? If so, our three-year, English-taught Bachelor’s in Technical Computer Science (TCS) is the right choice for you.
Why study Technical Computer Science?
Combine computer science with other essential technical expertise.
In a Bachelor's, you will combine in-depth computer science with broad technical insights. You will soon understand the devices, services, and processes that people, companies, and organizations need to exchange, process, and store information. This program covers topics like Cyber Security, Data Science, and AI. This involves a lot of programming as well, so the better you are at mathematics, the more successful you will be in your studies.
In essence, you will learn to think like a computer scientist, distinguishing clearly and sharply what goes well and what goes wrong, and what can be improved between all the separate links a computer system is made of. At the same time, you will become an engineer, capable of applying the basic computer knowledge you acquire in virtually every area of life: from transport to business, from politics to leisure.
A study program with a lot of teamwork and practical application
Technical Computer Science plays a key role in more and more societal, scientific, and technical domains. That is why it is important to be able to work together with experts from other disciplines, from electrical engineers, business information technologists, and mechanical engineers to management experts. You will come across all these disciplines at the University of Twente. Interdisciplinary cooperation plays an important role in this program, both in the research you do and in the challenging team projects you complete each module with. In Module 2, for example, you and your team will design, test, and implement a game in which you compete against other teams – with the winners receiving bonus marks. And in Module 4, you get to work on a project taken from the business world.
An international program at a leading university of technology
An added benefit of our Bachelor’s Technical Computer Science is its international setting. The language of choice is English, we have an international staff – representing countries such as Germany, Italy, Brazil, and Romania – and around 40% of our students come from abroad. We focus strongly on intercultural skills, and if you want to follow courses abroad, we will help you. All in all, we offer a great place for you to gain valuable intercultural experience and prepare yourself for a career in a field that increasingly transcends the borders of countries, organizations, and cultures.
The optional added challenge of getting a double-degree
If you are sufficiently talented and ambitious, you can combine Technical Computer Science with our Bachelor’s in Applied Mathematics. If you choose this, you will follow a very demanding, combined program. After finishing this double degree program, you will receive two full bachelor's diplomas from the University of Twente. With some extra effort, this double bachelor’s can be completed in three years.
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Admissions
Curriculum
You study a lot of mathematics and you gain in-depth knowledge of programming, software systems, computer networks, algorithms, computer hardware, human-machine interaction and much more. You also go deeply into aspects such as parallelism, information and data, complexity and security. With this bachelor’s, especially if you combine it with a master’s, you learn to use your fascination for computers and technology for improvements and solutions in the most diverse areas of society.
Modules Technical Computer Science
Year 1
- Module 1 | The Pearls of Computer Science: In the first module, you will discover how vast the field is by getting to know the eight ‘pearls’ of computer science: computer engineering, programming algorithms, designing large systems, encrypting data, databases, the Internet as a computer network, functional programming, and Artificial Intelligence. In this module's project, you and your team will produce a system that automatically analyses and visualises Tweets.
- Module 2 | Software Systems: In this module, you will learn how to design and create software: from analysing the requirements to delivering a working programme. For the final project, you will program a multi-player game according to a fixed structure.
- Module 3 | Network Systems: The Internet is a good example of a computer network. How does this kind of network operate? In this module, you will learn more about how information is sent and received in small packages – through cables or a wireless system – how the best path through a network is found, and how you can prevent the packages from getting damaged or lost on the way. Other topics in this module are network applications, protection against misuse, and the scalability of large networks.
- Module 4 | Data & Information: In the last module of the first year, you will learn how to place relevant business information in a database. You will become familiar with data management concepts and relational databases. You will also work on developing software, using an approach that is quite common in the business world: Agile software engineering. In two-week ‘sprints’, you will work on delivering the software, and in so-called ‘scrum sessions’, you will discuss with fellow students what you have been doing, what your next steps are, and which problems need solving. It is a great way of learning how to work on software as a team and in a structured way.
Year 2
- Module 5 | Computer Systems: In this module, you will learn how to realise digital circuits using Boolean algebra. With the help of these digital circuits, you can develop the basic building blocks for a computer, such as adders and multipliers. You will learn about building standard processors according to the Von Neumann principle, and also about Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), which allows you to program these processes using a programming language. In this module, you will programme ‘close to the hardware’. You will also learn how operating systems are built, and how they work.
- Module 6 | Intelligent Interaction Design: This module centres on designing, realising and evaluating the interaction between people and technological systems. During the project, you will work in a multidisciplinary team with students of Business Information Technology. As a team, you will develop an interactive and intelligent system, which you are then to evaluate with potential users. You will also deepen your knowledge of statistics, and learn about quantitative and qualitative methods for setting up user research. You will also deal with the various techniques for modelling intelligent system behaviour.
- Module 7 | Discrete Structures & efficient Algorithms: Discrete structures and efficient algorithms are the silent force behind many of our everyday activities, be it Internet banking (think of safe encryption algorithms), or using a navigation system (think of rapid shortest path computations). In this module, you will familiarise yourself with mathematical structures, such as graphs, networks and languages, as well as basic algebraic structures, such as groups and fields. The focus will be on algorithmic questions connected to these discrete structures. This means data structures, formal languages and models for computation will be on the menu, too. In the team project, you will use your knowledge to implement your algorithm for solving the notorious graph isomorphism problem. Who knows, you may win the programming competition!
- Module 8 | Electives: Module 8 offers various elective options. TCS offers four different modules: Programming Paradigms, Smart Spaces, Web Science, Cyber-Physical Systems and Data Science & Artificial Intelligence: Seeing through the Hype. Many students choose to follow Programming Paradigms, which centres on the different ways of programming. The standard style of programming follows the imperative paradigm: you tell the computer what it has to do step-by-step. But there are some surprising alternatives to this, such as the functional and logical paradigms, which are stronger and better suited for certain purposes. In this module, you will not only learn about these alternatives, you will also get a broader view and understanding of other programming language concepts, such as typification and semantics.
Year 3
- Modules 9&10 | Electives: Take one of the Technical Computer Science elective modules: Smart Spaces (intelligent systems and designing spaces), Cyber-Physical Systems (complex systems that bring together physics and computer science), Web Science (structure, behaviour and influence of global networks), Programming Paradigms or Data Science & Artificial Intelligence: Seeing through the hype if you haven't followed that during module 8.
- Modules 11&12 | Graduation semester: During your final semester, you will participate in two large projects. In Module 11, the Design Project, you and your project team will work on an IT problem. Both the University of Twente and existing IT businesses can provide the assignments. Either way, you will be working on a real-life problem. In Module 12, you carry out an individual research project, presenting your findings at the Twente Student Conference on IT. This conference is similar to a real scientific conference. Some of our students’ research projects presented here are so good that they get published in internationally recognised scientific journals. This makes the conference a highly educational, exciting conclusion to your bachelor's. If you pass this test, the Bachelor of Science degree will be yours. In choosing your graduation project topic, you can bear in mind the master’s specialisation or programme you are aiming for.
Program Tuition Fee
Career Opportunities
The Bachelor's in Technical Computer Science offers you endless career possibilities. In the future, you could work in roles such as:
- Software Developer
- Data Scientist
- Cyber Security Analyst
- Machine Learning Engineer
- AI Specialist
- Internet Security Expert
- Operations Manager
- Scientific Researcher
Program Admission Requirements
Show your commitment and readiness for Grad school by taking the GRE - the most broadly accepted exam for graduate programs internationally.