The Faculty of Science and Engineering will be reducing the number of student assistants in order to cut back on costs. New guidelines will be put in place.
A sharp rise in the number of students and increased work stress has led to an upsurge in the number of student assistants at FSE. But the faculty board says they are not always used efficiently. This needs to change.
Thirty students
According to the new guidelines, lecturers won’t be allowed to hire a student assistant unless there are more than thirty students in a group. The number of FTEs for each student assistant will also be regulated.
In addition, they will not be allowed to coordinate any courses or grade assignments. For laboratory courses, lecturers have to critically assess whether they can reduce the number of student assistants, ‘while maintaining the required safety guarantees’.
The number of people who are allowed to hire student assistants will also be scaled down next semester.
PhD students
Finally, the various institutes will also be made to utilise PhD students more. Ten percent of PhDs’ position is intended to be spent on teaching, but they spend much less time in the classroom than that.
The faculty board did have a few remarks on the new measures. There is currently no overview of how many student assistants there are exactly and what they’re being used for. It’s also often unclear how many student assistants are needed when they are being used.