During promotional activities, universities like to showcase their education models. Whether you call it ‘Bachelor College & Graduate School’ or the ‘Twente Education Model’, every university’s message is basically the same: thanks to this unique model, we only have excellent programs. And let’s just forget for a moment that literally every education institution in the Netherlands says the same thing.

At TU/e, this message doesn’t align very well with the figures we achieve. After all, if our education model is so good, how come the number of credits that the average student obtains each year has been decreasing for years and has now even dropped below 40? And how come the average time to study program completion has been increasing for years and is now 45 months for bachelor’s students and 32 months for master’s students?

It isn’t because we have lazy students. Recent comments submitted as part of the National Student Survey among Data Science students showed that students mainly suffer from quarter stress. The rigid schedule consisting of quarters, often with multiple group or other assignments running parallel to one another, makes it impossible to take a weekend off and let the subject matter sink in. And the eight weeks of lectures are followed by two exam weeks full of exams and project deadlines. And the Monday after that, the students have to continue, because the next quarter starts. Many students do not meet the deadlines, or make conscious choices about what they do and don’t do. So yeah, if the study component is 5 credits and you have to drop something every quarter, you end up with 40 credits per year.

This low number of credits costs TU/e serious money. According to Patrick Groothuis, the annual cost of a bachelor’s student is 18,000 euros and that of a master’s student 21,000 euros. The government only subsidizes EU students during their nominal study period, so every student that takes too long to complete their studies costs us that amount, minus the statutory tuition fee. You don’t have to be a math genius to figure out that if every student were to obtain 10 percent more credits a year and, by extension, completes their program faster, this would result in long-term savings of more than 14 million per year. With a 20 percent increase in the number of credits per student per year, the savings would even amount to 22 million per year, structurally. The big question is how we’re going to achieve this.

In my opinion, the solution isn’t all that difficult. If we want students to obtain more credits per year, we have to get rid of the rigid framework of timeslots, 5 credits per course, mandatory project work, and inflexible quarters. This way, if you’re forced to take a sick day or if you happen not to understand a certain course all that well, you don’t immediately incur an insurmountable study delay.

So give programs the space to design their curricula in such a way that it’s appropriate for that program. If that means that Calculus for Physics is only 3 credits, fine. And if a CBL project doesn’t last the first quarter, but the entire first semester and only comprises a total of 2 credits, then that’s fine as well. Project education is one of the most expensive forms of education anyway, so should we really invest so heavily in it in this day and age?

In a nutshell, to quote my colleague Willem Mulder: do students and staff a favor and stop implementing ill-conceived (and often completely unworkable) policies from the top down. You’ll even save money that way.

Boudewijn van Dongen is a professor of Process Analytics at TU/e. The views expressed in this column are his own.