The student parties at the Faculty of Law have expressed concerns about the pilot for the ‘smarter academic year’, which will begin at the faculty in September.
The pilot—intended to reduce workload—means that the number of teaching weeks will decrease. The seventh week of each block—the final one before exams—will be free of teaching. Tutorial groups in the first year of bachelor programmes had already been reduced to six weeks, but the practice will be expanded from next year.
Cancelling one teaching week means that many of the courses will only have twelve lectures instead of the current fourteen, reducing the teaching load for staff by about 6 to 10 percent.
Confusion
However, the student parties are concerned because participation in the pilot won’t be mandatory for lecturers next year; this will only become mandatory on September 1, 2026. Helmich Heutink, chair of Progressief Rechten, wondered during a faculty council meeting whether the timetable would become confusing if the smarter academic year were only partially implemented.
That won’t be the case, according to law dean Wilbert Kolkman. ‘Lecturers will simply explain in advance how their course is structured. Moreover, there’s already variation in the amount of freedom lecturers have’, he said.
Less knowledge
The students are also worried about the reduction in the number of lectures. ‘Cancelling a week of teaching means scrapping two topics per course. As a result, students will graduate with much less knowledge’, said Thijs van der Werf, deputy chair of Ten Behoeve van Rechtenstudenten.
The faculty board partially agreed. ‘I hope we can make most of the cuts in quantity, but I do think cancelling lectures will indeed affect the quality of education’, Kolkman said.
No questions
Van der Werf also fears that students won’t be able to ask their lecturers questions during the class-free week, when they are preparing for exams. ‘We heard that some lecturers don’t want to respond during that week because otherwise, their workload wouldn’t actually be reduced’, he said.
That could happen, Kolkman admitted. ‘But I expect many lecturers will instead hold a half-hour Q&A session, for example.’
Five other faculties have been experimenting with the smarter academic year on a small scale since last academic year.