‘End costly crash courses’

Education minister Jet Bussemaker is none too pleased with the expensive crash courses which ever more students are taking in preparation for selection days at universities. She feels that such courses should be made redundant.
By Peter Keizer / Translation by Traci White

Tutoring companies offer incoming students courses to prepare them for the selection process in various academic programmes. Student organisations are alarmed by that development. They think that it could lead to unequal chances because families that earn less cannot afford the courses.

Bussemaker agrees. She wants to see the classes done away with. ‘I think it is very undesirable when would-be students are made to feel that these commercial crash courses are necessary’, she wrote in response to parliamentary questions on the topic.

‘Redundant’

Bussemaker sees it as the universities’ responsibility to prepare potential students for the selection process. Research universities and universities of applied sciences should inform students in a timely and transparent manner about what the process entails. ‘The institutions should take it upon themselves to make such courses redundant’, she says.

According to the minister, progressively more academic programmes are utilising selection. Two years ago, there were still 199 bachelor programmes that used numerus fixus. Now, there are only 91.

The NOS states that the number of aspiring university students enrolling in such courses is rising. The courses are especially popular among pupils planning to study medicine and dentistry.

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