The second-year Psychology students who started a petition last year will once again meet with the director of education this week. 'We trust that we'll reach some kind of solution', says faculty Dean Michiel Kompier.

Next week, Director of Education Ruud Meulenbroek will meet with the second-year Psychology students who started a petition in October to protest the many English-language lectures in their programme. The students have discussed this issue with the director before, but did not feel that any progress was made. Michiel Kompier, dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, is certain that things have changed now.

Action

‘Their feedback made us realise that we should have explained the bilingual nature of the programme more clearly’, says Kompier. ‘We did this during the most recent orientation days.’ The faculty also took to heart the students’ complaints about the English proficiency of their lecturers. ‘We looked into this and found that while most lecturers meet the required proficiency level, some do not. We immediately took the necessary steps to remedy this.’

‘Their feedback made us realise that we should have explained the bilingual nature of the programme more clearly.’

It was also agreed that students can use dictionaries during the second-year exams and that half of the question-and-answer lectures will be held in Dutch.

Stopgap solution

The director of education plans to inform students about the intended measures next week. ‘We trust that we’ll reach some kind of solution’, says Kompier. The dean discussed the matter with Director of Education Meulenbroek, but has no intention of mediating between the latter and the students.

The second-year students were upset this year to discover that their lectures would be held in English, despite having opted for the Dutch-language track. While the programme claims to be appealing to the ‘international nature of science’, the students felt like it was a stopgap solution to spare lecturers from the burden of having to teach a Dutch-language programme alongside an English-language programme.