Student
Education

Slow student fine scrapped: students happy, uni annoyed

Students are ecstatic that they are seeing the last of the slow student fine but the university feels it has been played around with.

‘This is fantastic news; finally they are abandoning that awful measure,’ is the reaction of VeSte member Wouter Jan van Roosmalen. ‘Students have worked themselves to the bone and got incredibly worked up about the fine and now it turns out that was all for nothing.’ The university is less enamoured with the abolition, admits Simon Vink. ‘The slow student fine was linked to an efficiency cutback in university funding of around 200 million euros. The idea was that part of the cutback could be redeemed through the Halbe levy but there is no mention of that in the interim agreement. We’ve probably simply lost that money.’ Vink says the way the politicians have treated students and universities is ‘shabby, to put it mildly’. ‘We haven’t been taken seriously. I think it is shocking that there have been enough occasions when they could have prevented this measure, both in the Lower House and the Upper House, and now it is being abolished without thinking about how this should be done and what is to take its place. It’s debatable whether the abolition is such good news for students.’ VeSte is also worried. ‘On the one hand we are over the moon but on the other hand we know they need something to replace the slow student fine in order to make up the shortfall. We hope the politicians have learnt their lesson not to introduce measures too hastily.’

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