AFAS preventing student assistants from getting paid
‘It’s a fairly complicated process’, says project manager Erwin Boelens, who’s aware of the issues. ‘There are a lot of steps, and the system can freeze up at any one of those. Just one mistake and you’re stuck.’
One piece of information the students have to provide is where they’re from, but internationals ran into trouble when the system wouldn’t recognise the small town they were from. ‘That’s not good. But we’re working on it.’
Dutch
The system is also mainly in Dutch, which is causing more problems for internationals. ‘There should be a little button to toggle the system to English. But apparently, it’s not always available. We’re looking into it.’
At a faculty meeting at Behavioural and Social Sciences (BSS), it was also revealed that students tend to not know what they’re doing wrong. They’re also having trouble logging into the system. The error message is then sent to the lecturers rather than the students, leading to an unnecessary volume of emails.
‘BSS has made me aware of the issue’, says Boelens. ‘But it’s not going well at other faculties either, like the Faculty of Science and Engineering and the Faculty of Arts.’
Contact point
To solve the issues, each faculty will get a contact point. There is a workshop on November 30, where support staff will receive information about the system and what to do in case of problems. ‘We’re hoping to speed up the process that way’, says Boelens.
BSS has finished the administrative process for approximately 60 percent of student assistants. The faculty hopes to finish the rest soon. ‘The students need to get paid, obviously’, says Boelens. ‘As soon as possible.’