Signing up for a course at the Student Service Centre (SSC) and then not showing up for it comes at a price nowadays: students have to pay a registration fee that is only refunded if they’ve actually participated.
The SSC stopped asking a course fee when its courses went online due to the Covid pandemic, trainer Erwin Uildriks with the SSC explains. ‘When we started up our on-site courses again, they were still free, but we found that many students did not show up after registration. This led to the undesirable situation where we had half-full groups and a waiting list at the same time.’
The deposit should also discourage students from enrolling in five courses but only show up to one or two of them. ‘When a deposit is required for enrolment, people tend to think carefully rather than enrol in all the courses’, says trainer Anna Henkel.
The measure was introduced three months ago and so far, both Henkel and Uildriks say, it seems to be working. ‘It was great to see almost everyone at each session’, Henkel says.