Student - February 14, 2013

Safety net for slow students

The plans for limiting the number of resits to be held could affect students facing the new hard cutoff point between a Bachelor's and a Master's degree. For this reason, the student council threatened to veto the measure. The university has promised to soften the blow.

The university wants to cut down the number of resit periods to two per year. As a result, third-year students who fail their last exam could end up having to delay starting on their Master's. This is an effect of the new rule that your Bachelor's must be in the bag before your start on your Master's. 'Students have nothing to do but pick their noses for six months,' is student council member Wouter-Jan van Roosmalen's way of putting it. 'That doesn't do the pass rate any good, whereas a high pass rate is the university's main aim.'
The executive board admits that the changes to the resit periods could cause problems. It also wants to enable as many students as possible to proceed swiftly to a Master's, says rector magnificus Martin Kropff. To this end the university has promised to make provision for this particular group of students. 'We want to enforce the hard cutoff point, so the arrangement is only for serious students who have almost completed their Bachelor's. This is a small group of students and affects a small number of courses.' Besides making an exception for these students, the university is also drawing up a policy for courses with a high failure rate, and the student council will be closely involved in evaluating the new protocol.
The student council is satisfied with this gesture from the university. They do want the protocol to be ready by the end of this academic year and to be able to give feedback on it.