Every program must have PER; that’s what the law says. In these regulations, a number of ground rules must be agreed upon regarding the exact structure of a program and the rights and obligations between student and institution. However, the PER in Eindhoven are used for an entirely different purpose and that is to provide directions to the departments. To ensure that all departments do exactly what the central organization wants, the PER are full of process descriptions. Descriptions that don’t actually belong in the PER and that make the document incredibly long-winded.

However, what stands out the most in our regulations is the lack of a hardship clause. While the TU/e pretends to be ‘student-centered’, it’s precisely in this area that things go very wrong. In the PER of a random program in Amsterdam, we read: “In instances not regulated by the Teaching and Examination Regulations or in the event of demonstrable extreme unreasonableness and unfairness the dean responsible for the degree programme will decide, unless the matter concerned is the responsibility of the Examinations Board.” In Eindhoven, there’s no such clause.

Precisely because the PER specify the cases in which an Examination Committee may deviate from the rules if there are special circumstances, this automatically means they may not do so in all cases that aren’t specified. This too is a piece of central’s need for control. At the central level, they want to prevent departments from deviating from the rules. And that sometimes leads to very unpleasant situations for students and for examination committees. It’s for good reason that the inclusion of a general hardship clause has been a long-standing wish of the examination committees, which is always pushed aside in the process of determining the PER.

Although this process has only just begun, I’m going to at least try for our department’s PER to have a general hardship clause. Which, by the way, doesn’t automatically mean that an exception to the rules should be made for every student who wants to go on a ski vacation.