Trying to sign up for one of the UG’s free Dutch courses is enormously frustrating, international students say. ‘I was trying it on three different devices, but the website just wouldn’t work.’
Steli Simeonova had been on the Language Centre’s website fifteen minutes last Tuesday before registrations opened for a new batch of Dutch courses. She was anxiously waiting to sign up for a beginner’s course. But when the clock struck 10 and registrations opened, the website simply stopped working.
Sweating
‘The page kept loading endlessly’, says the Bulgarian student of media studies. ‘I was trying on three different devices, but the website just wouldn’t work.’ That’s when she started getting stressed. ‘I was actually sweating.’
After trying to open new windows, the page finally loaded on her laptop. But now the ‘pay and join’ button wouldn’t work. ‘I pressed it, and nothing happened. Then the website crashed and I got an error message.’
After another attempt, Steli managed to secure a spot, but it took her twenty-four minutes. ‘It’s insane. People had told me how hard it is, but I still couldn’t believe it.’
Political pressure
To her, it was just a very ‘anxiety-ridden’ process. ‘Especially now with the political pressure to learn Dutch, I feel very dependent on these courses. That made it even more stressful’, she says.
And she’s not the only one to feel that way. Sara Jugănaru, a Romanian psychology student, had a similar experience. At 10 a.m. sharp, the website just went blank and she got a server error message. ‘I had to log in again and I thought, that’s it, the spots are gone already’, she says. After twenty minutes, however, she did manage to register successfully.
‘It left me with such a bitter aftertaste, though’, she says. ‘I felt disappointed and a bit angry, too. Because everyone already knows how hard it is to get a spot. They should have expected heavy website traffic.’ She thinks a solution would be to extend the server space on such busy days.
Or the Language Centre should just set different registration times for different courses, Steli says. ‘That would make the traffic more fluid.’
Network outage
Currently, the Language Centre offers 185 free Dutch courses a year, with a total of 2,775 spots for students, PhDs and postdocs. Registration for all free Dutch courses within a block, regardless of the level, opens on the same day, at the same time. But that’s not what caused the problem, according to UG spokesperson Elies Wempe-Kouwenhoven.
‘Registration usually goes smoothly, the system handles it well’, she says. ‘But last Tuesday at 10, we noticed the system was slow and we got a notification that there was a failure.’ The Language Centre decided to close the registration and posted a message that they would reopen exactly one day later.
‘On Wednesday morning, most were able to register again. Due to a nationwide SURF network outage, it did often take longer to register’, Wempe-Kouwenhoven says.
Not a one-time issue
Diana Cristina Tabara, a Romanian UG student, saw the message appear after forty-five minutes of trying to register. But according to her, this wasn’t a one-time issue. Last time she signed up for a course, in January 2024, there were technical issues too.
‘It wasn’t as bad then as it was now’, she says. ‘But the website kept loading endlessly and I had to refresh the page multiple times to proceed.’ It took her around twenty minutes to select the course and press ‘join’.
Half an hour
Master student Jelka also had issues signing up in both April and October 2024. ‘The page always takes forever to load and it takes a while until you can actually click on the button.’ On average, around half an hour, she says. ‘I don’t remember the website crashing, though.’
For her, it’s just a minor inconvenience she’s come to accept. But for Diana, it’s a frustrating and anxiety-inducing process. ‘When I choose my group, I plan everything around it’, she says. ‘The technical issues risk disrupting my schedule, which is concerning because I also work part-time and I’m involved in a student association, on top of university classes.’