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New schedule divides opinion (video)

The extended daytime schedule, intended to help cope with the growth of WUR, has been in place since the start of this academic year. A survey among students shows that not everyone is happy with the longer teaching days.
Luuk Zegers

© Marte Hofsteenge

‘I have a terrible schedule: I start at 8.20 and finish at 17.20 every day. And in between I have nothing for four or six hours,’ says a student in one of Resource’s Soundbites videos. But another is actually quite happy with all the free time between classes. ‘I like it if there’s time to do homework or prepare for lectures in between, because I work better at the uni than at home.’

Long breaks

Head of scheduling Fred Jonker knows there is discussion among students about the length of breaks in the new schedule. ‘Before we started making the new schedule students indicated that they need those long lunchbreaks, so we took that into account. But what suits one person might not be suit another because of the long gaps between classes. That is an interesting tension and it should be discussed.’

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Jonker has had relatively few criticisms of the new schedule from lecturers, he says. ‘We get some comments here and there, but those are start-up problems. You always get those in the first period. Maybe slightly more than usual this time, but then it is also a completely new schedule.’

To get an overview of students’ potential scheduling problems, the student council party VeSte has set up a contact point:

vestewageningen.nl/edscontactpoint.

So far 11 complaints and ideas have been submitted. VeSte representative Roos Verstegen doesn’t want to go into the nature of the submissions at this point. ‘At the end of the period we will evaluate all the comments and discuss the results with the Executive Board.’

Students and lecturers can address urgent complaints to Jonker directly. ‘Then we might be able to do something about it immediately’, he says.

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