Second-year students in the Dutch-spoken Psychology programme are attending lectures in English this year. Unhappy with this development, the students started a petition and managed to acquire more than 200 signatures the first day.

Second-year Psychology students were in for a surprise this year: their lectures would no longer be in Dutch, even though they specifically opted for a Dutch-taught programme. While the seminars are still offered in Dutch, the lectures have been merged with the English-language track. This is problematic, according to many students, who started an online petition on Friday and managed to acquire more than 200 signatures the first day.

Liz Beekman, Dana Petrovic and Tim Eeftinck Schattenkerk, second-year students in the Dutch-language track, organised the petition. In so doing, they’re not taking issue with internationalisation as such. Eeftinck Schattenkerk: ‘We’re not against the university’s decision to attract more international students. We know it’s necessary, but it has to be done right. And that’s not the case here.’

Poor English
The biggest problem, according to the students, is the lecturers’ English proficiency. “They struggle to find the right words and their sentence structure is bad,” says Beekman. “Last year they could draw from their extensive pool of knowledge, but now they don’t really explain more than what’s in the PowerPoint presentation.”

‘We have a right to the Dutch-language lectures we were promised’

The students were also unhappy with the way the transition was communicated. “They announced in passing, during a lecture no less, that the language of instruction would change,” says Beekman. “We weren’t given a say at all. They apologised for this during the first-year diploma ceremony, but carried on anyway.” This, according to the students, is against the regulations. ‘According to the EER, we have a right to the Dutch-language lectures we were promised when we started the programme.’

Beekman and Eeftinck Schattenkerk have since contacted the Faculty Student Council (FSR) and were invited to discuss the issue with the director of education and the programme coordinator. They hope the issue will be addressed promptly. ‘We realise it will take a lot of time and effort to separate the lectures again’, says Beekman. ‘At this point, we just want to know that they plan to make this change.’ Eeftinck Schattenkerk agrees. ‘We’re not asking them to do anything new. They just have to go back to the old system.’

The director of education and the programme coordinator want to discuss the issue with the students before issuing an official statement.