News item | 04-10-2022 | 17:00
Offer students, lecturers and researchers more peace and space during the academic year. That is the objective of pilots for a ‘smarter academic year’. Minister Dijkgraaf (OCW) invites universities in particular to participate in one of these pilots, he wrote to the House of Representatives today. The pilots involve a smarter organization of existing educational activities and a responsible reduction of the number of weeks with education and/or exams. This gives researchers and lecturers more time to do research and improve education. Students benefit from the extra space with, for example, more time for internships and more options regarding the pace and timing of studying, theses and tests.
The pilots are a response to the advice published last year ‘A smarter academic year’ of the Young Academy. This analysis of the Dutch academic year shows that this is relatively intensive and long compared to other countries: the Dutch year is on average up to 9 weeks longer than at other comparable universities in the EU (education and exam weeks added together). This creates a high workload for lecturers, researchers and students and leaves little time for research and development and innovation in education. This problem mainly affects universities.
The pilots are about smarter organization of existing educational activities and reducing, in a responsible manner, the number of education and/or exam weeks. For example, institutions can focus on properly screening programs for unnecessary overlap between components and reducing an excess of interim tests. Limits can also be set on the number of resit moments. In addition, institutions can set up schedules in a smarter way and use online contact in a good way.
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The pilots should reduce the workload of lecturers, researchers and students and create space for other activities. In this way, teachers and researchers have more time to do research, improve and innovate education and follow training courses and courses. Students are given more options when it comes to the timing and pace of their studies, as well as the assessment moments. There is also more time for extra-curricular activities, summer schoolinternships, stay abroad and a better balance between study, job and private life.
Minister Dijkgraaf: “In my conversations with researchers, lecturers and students, I hear the enormous need for more breathing space. Researchers who do not have enough time to do research, students who groan under a high study load, resulting in psychological pressure and work stress. At the moment, the balance between research and teaching tasks is lost. With these pilots I want to try, together with universities and colleges, to offer them more peace and space. I want to work on a higher education system with more freedom to breathe.”
Invitation
The minister now formally invites the universities and two universities of applied sciences that have contributed ideas to participate in one of the pilots for a smarter academic year that they have developed recently. Several universities have already shown concrete interest. Institutions can participate in a pilot with a maximum of three programs and/or organizational units, during the period 2023-2026. Each faculty or institution determines for itself what can reduce their workload.
The main thing is that the pilots should not be at the expense of educational quality, the final level of students and the final qualifications of the participating study programme. It will also be prevented that the same number of lecture hours is planned in fewer weeks. In total, Minister Dijkgraaf is making 10 million euros available for the pilots. The University of Amsterdam and Erasmus University Rotterdam ensure knowledge sharing, monitoring and accountability. Two years after implementation, it will be examined what the first results of the pilots are and whether adjustments are desirable.