The Executive Board lifted both requirements - the 75% rule and the first-year diploma requirement - following a ruling from the Higher Education Appeals Tribunal (Dutch acronym: CBHO). These requirements should in fact have ceased to apply last academic year already, according to the University Council, since the CBHO issued its first ruling on 1 November 2018. Back then, the court ruled that the regulation for allocation of board grants applied by Radboud University Nijmegen was unlawful. This regulation was similar to the one applied at the Eindhoven university. TU/e’s Executive Board decided not to alter its own regulation at that point, based on comments about the CBHO ruling made by lawyers from the national legal consultation. Procedural requirements such as those made by TU/e were still legally justifiable, the Executive Board informed the council in June 2019.

This year, the CBHO was presented with another case regarding a Student Financial Support Fund: that of TU Delft. This fund too is similar to the TU/e fund. On July 22 of this year, the CBHO ruled that the regulation applied in Delft was unlawful also. This means that the appeals tribunal had issued two rulings that showed the questionable nature of two academic progress requirements at TU/e. The Executive Board recently decided to lift both requirements.

Not completely honest

The two student groups in the university council, Groep-één and DAS Eindhoven, believe that the regulation still isn’t completely honest, despite the Executive Board’s decision. They claim that students who served on a board during last academic year might feel treated unfairly. Because why was the regulation adjusted only now? The student groups find it hard to believe that the second, recent ruling on the Student Financial Support Fund in Delft had such a significantly larger impact than the earlier ruling issued in 2018. The same reasoning applied in both cases, according to Aya Bergkamp of DAS and Thomas Lippens of Groep-één.

Students who wanted to serve on a board last academic year might have been eligible for a board grant, based on that earlier ruling. Incidentally, the recent adjustment to the regulation do not oblige TU/e to retroactively compensate last year’s boards, Bergkamp and Lippens say.

Solutions

And then there is the size of the board grants, which are established on the basis of the number of months a student is expected to fall behind with his or her studies. Bergkamp and Lippens say that the maximum number of months has been set for all umbrella associations. However, they say that this number wasn’t enough already for some umbrella organizations when the ‘old’ Student Financial Support Fund still applied, and that as a result not all board members were eligible for a full grant. The recent adjustment to the regulation might only lead to an increase in the number of student board members who are eligible for a board grant, making the problem - not enough grants - only worse, they believe.

So, what’s the solution, according to them? That’s a difficult question, they say, but they point to possibilities that are currently being discussed at other universities, such as the concept of a tuition fee waiver for board members.

Bergkamp: “Some universities (including the University of Groningen, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Utrecht University, ed.) already apply this. Students are exempted from paying tuition fee while serving on a board, so that they don’t suffer the stress of being required to pass courses. They can fully focus on their board tasks. Another option would be to arrive at a compromise by implementing what’s known as flexible learning, which means that students pay per course. This could be advantageous for other students as well, such as students who want to study parttime, or students who need to take only a few final courses before they graduate. But it could also be a solution for students who aren’t eligible for the Student Financial Support Fund now, but who don’t study fulltime. Think of the members of the many student teams at TU/e. It offers them the possibility of studying more flexible for a year, and they have fewer financial burdens.”

ECTS rule

Student board members at TU/e, incidentally, are still required to obtain a certain number of credits during their board year. That requirement has been maintained. Under normal circumstances, they need to obtain a minimum of fifteen credits, but that number was lowered to ten credits last academic year due to the corona crisis. Lippens: “For some board members, obtaining those credits is realistic, but for others, this requirement could lead to much stress in a year that’s busy enough as it is.”

The thinking behind the ‘15 ECTS rule’ is that students will find it easier to continue with their study after their board year. Lippens: “In practice, that rule could result in board members opting for three ‘easy’ courses, so that they will be able to meet the requirement. However, the question is whether those ‘easy’ courses correspond with the rest of the student board member’s curriculum.”