According to faculty board member Gerry Wakker, a modified proposal is currently being drawn up in response to letters that came in after the clustering plans were announced. ‘It should be said that not all these letters were in resistance; some of them simply requested more information’, says Wakker.
Earlier, staff and students protested the plans. They feel the plans are being implemented too hastily, are not well-founded, and will lead to more pressure and bureaucracy. Student party Letteren Vooruit fears that educational programmes will suffer from the clustering.
Measures
The cluster division is part of a new package of measures that was announced in summer of last year by the faculty board. Programmes will no longer be independent islands, but belong to groups. These so-called clusters will have their own budgets.
The board has proposed five clusters that should be implemented in September. Each group consists of bachelor and master programmes, an educational master, and a research master. In the plans, the department boards would be replaced by overarching cluster boards and coordinators. Clustering would also add an extra administrative tier: the Directors of Studies. They will be responsible for one or more coherent programmes within a cluster.
The modified plans will be announced later this week.