ACTA provides the five-year Dentistry study course of the Universiteit van Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit. Working from this educational function, ACTA endeavours to provide a broad-based dentistry foundation course which centres on the student’s learning process. In addition, ACTA sets itself the task of providing éducation permanente for scientists working in the field of dentistry and for professional dentists. In the area of postgraduate education, refresher courses are provided as well as courses intended to broaden and deepen the participants’ expertise. Some departments provide postgraduate programmes of three years, which lead to a Diploma (for further details, see the ‘Postgraduate programmes’ brochure).

Dentistry is a medical-technical specialist field. Correspondingly, a combination of theoretical and practical education is supplied during the course of studies. ACTA strives to give students an optimum learning environment by utilizing various teaching forms and high-quality facilities.
 
The theoretical education includes medical, social and dentistry subjects. In addition, academic training occupies an important place in the curriculum. The practical education consists of dealing with and treating patients. Under the supervision of experienced dentistry teachers, students thus gain experience in the various areas of dentistry. ACTA strives for an interaction between theory and practice, with acquired knowledge and understanding being applied in practical work. This serves to create a good learning environment in which the student is prepared for his/her task as patient care provider and/or scientific researcher.
 
The Dentistry course of studies is subject to a numerus fixus (registration limit) whereby students are selected by means of a national lottery for one of the three study programmes in the Netherlands. Besides this, a number of the students are admitted by ACTA itself through “decentral selection”. The conditions for this decentral selection are set out in the Intake Guide of the Information Management Group (IBG) in Groningen.