De eerste stap naar scholarships voor Nederlandse studenten is gezet, precies zoals het ministerie van OCW graag ziet. De TU Eindhoven gaat haar internationale beurzenprogramma ook openstellen voor studenten uit eigen land.
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“Het is een pril plan”, zegt een woordvoerder, en de uitwerking moet nog volgen. Maar voor “the best and brightest” onder de Nederlandse studenten gaat de universiteit samen met enkele bedrijven studiebeurzen beschikbaar stellen waarmee ze een dure tweede masteropleiding kunnen volgen.
Buitenlandse studenten kunnen aan de TU/e sinds 2006 een beurs krijgen, als ze daarna ook nog drie jaar bij een bedrijf uit de regio gaan werken, zoals Philips of Océ. Vorig jaar zijn er 225 beurzen toegekend. Wat de voorwaarden voor Nederlandse studenten zullen zijn, is nog niet bekend.
Maandag opende staatssecretaris Zijlstra met een videoboodschap een ‘denktanksessie’ over zulke beurzen. Het kabinet hoopt dat het bedrijfsleven inspringt nu de overheid geen tweede opleiding meer wil financieren.
VVD-kamerlid Anne-Wil Lucas had in een motie gevraagd over het kabinet zulke studiebeurzen van bedrijven wil aanmoedigen. Ze ziet ook veel in prijsvragen, waarbij studenten soms tienduizenden euro’s kunnen verdienen met hun ideeën. Ze prijst de oprichters van www.studentenprijsvraag.nl, waar zulke prijsvragen zijn verzameld.
When I started my first job as an engineer, my boss told me: “If you want to work for me, you must learn how to touch-type.” Touch-typing is typing with all fingers without looking at the keyboard. So – as this was the pre-Internet era – I got myself a touch-typing book and spent an hour a day typing ‘ffff’, ‘gfde’…until, after a month, I could touch-type pretty well. My boss was indeed right to demand I obtain such a simple skill. Today I’m a much faster typist and, more importantly, can type without dividing my attention between keyboard and screen.
Unfortunately, touch-typing is a bit more difficult than it should be. The way the keys are laid out on the keyboard is purposely clumsy, reportedly an artifact from the days of the mechanical typewriter. The QWERTY layout – standard on most keyboards in Holland – was designed to slow typists down and hence reduce the number of times the typewriter arms got tangled. The QWERTY keyboard designers organized the keys such that common letter sequences require the use of the same hand or even the same finger.
As those who’ve visited internet cafes abroad know, there are some varieties of the QWERTY keyboard. The French favor AZERTY keyboards, where the Q and W have traded places with the A and Z. In Germany and Central Europe, the Y and Z swap places on QWERTZ keyboards. Other language specific keys are prevalent abroad as well. A German office mate of mine always complained whenever he had to type on a keyboard without an umlaut. Spanish keyboards meanwhile feature the letter ‘n’ with the little wave above it for typing ‘mañana’, while Scandinavian keyboards feature letters with little circles above them.
Now that tangled typewriter arms are no longer an issue, new keyboard layouts have been proposed. Dvorak is perhaps the most popular. Fans of the Dvorak layout also claim that it reduces RSI – repetitive stress injuries. At first glance the Dvorak layout looks weird: the letter A is still in its ‘normal’ place, but is then followed by all the other vowels: AOEUI. For those who’d like to give Dvorak a shot, both Macs and PCs allow for Dvorak keyboard configurations.
Somewhat surprisingly, most TU students and staff still use the embarrassing two-finger typing style. Suggestions that they learn touch-typing are usually met with hostile responses – “I am very good typist!” – a reply that recalls the autistic Raymond in the movie ‘Rain Man’, who incessantly claimed, “I am a very good driver”. The first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one, yet that is beyond most two-finger typists.
It would of course make lots of sense to make touch-typing part of the basic skills set taught in schools. Elementary school kids spend years learning to write legibly with a pen, and rightly so, yet nowadays most writing is done with a keyboard, not a pen. Teaching everyone to touch-type should now become a standard part of the school curriculum. Hopefully the two-finger typists reading this will now be inspired to learn touch-typing on their own. There are many free courses available on the internet. Start now, and within a month your fingers will be doing the typing for you.
Mark Bakker is an associate professor at the faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences
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