The Nutrition and Health Bachelor’s programme has got the definite go-ahead for an enrolment restriction. As a result the proposal can be sent to the education agency DUO. Next April, DUO will announce whether it is giving its permission.
The plan involves a maximum of 130 first-years, to be chosen by the faculty on the basis of motivation and average school certificate grade. The participatory councils agreed to the proposal after obtaining certain guarantees from the Executive Board. For instance, the board will ask for permission if it wants to introduce another student ceiling, the student council has the right to consent to the final details of decentralized selection and there will be an evaluation after three years.‘We were reasonably satisfied by the answers,’ says Wouter-Jan van Roosmalen, student council member representing VeSte. ‘And restricted enrolment is the only solution for this degree programme in the short term.’ He does hope the university will think hard about the growing student numbers. He draws hope from the fact that a Growth in Student Numbers Working Group was set up a few months ago to consider this matter.Nutrition and Health has been shooting up for years: the number of first-years grew from 49 to 136 between 2003 and 2012. Now the counter seems likely to stick at 170, said programme director Rolf Marteijn a few weeks back: ‘This year will be a huge challenge’