Zijlstra in zwaar weer

Het was geen goede week voor de staatssecretaris van Onderwijs. Studentenorganisaties kondigden aan naar de rechter te stappen als de langstudeerdersboete door de Eerste en de Tweede Kamer wordt aangenomen. Dat was geen loos dreigement. De studenten van ISO, LSVb en LKvV baseren zich op advies van advocatenbureau Stibbe. 

De advocaten menen onder meer dat de wet strijdig is met het rechtszekerheidbeginsel, aangezien de wet met terugwerkende kracht zal gelden. Ook schermen ze met het ‘Internationaal verdrag inzake economische, sociale en culturele rechten’ dat Nederland heeft geratificeerd. Daarin is een ‘geleidelijke invoering van kosteloos onderwijs’ afgesproken. 

De regering verhoogt het collegegeld voor studenten die te lang over hun studie doen. Dat wordt de langstudeerdersboete genoemd. Maar als het inderdaad een boete is, dan zou dat in strijd zijn met het Europese Verdrag voor de Rechten van de Mens, aldus Stibbe. Daarin staat dat mensen niet met terugwerkende kracht voor een handeling kunnen worden veroordeeld, als die eerder nog niet strafbaar was.

Volgende week donderdag komt het wetsvoorstel in de Tweede Kamer. Daar heeft Zijlstra, met de PVV erbij, een meerderheid. Maar in de Eerste Kamer ligt dat anders. De SGP kondigde deze week namelijk aan in de bres te willen springen voor studenten die al vertraging hebben opgelopen. Als de SGP afhaakt, wordt het vrijwel onmogelijk om de wet langs de senaat krijgen en kunnen de studentenorganisaties zich hun advocatenkosten uitsparen. 

Professors
TU Delft has awarded Antoni van Leeuwenhoek professorships to Joris Dik and Kristina Lauche. The Antoni van Leeuwenhoek appointments are reserved for the university’s best young scientists. In recent years, art historian and material scientist Joris Dik made headlines with the attribution of Evita Peron’s Alfa Romea and the discovery of a portrait of a female figure behind another Van Gogh painting. In 2003 Dik was hired by 3ME Professor Barend Thijsse to set up a research line in ‘Materials in Art and Archeology’. He will now extend these activities to a full group. Lauche joined the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering in 2007 as associate professor of Design Theory and Methodology. Her main research area is innovation, especially regarding team interaction in product innovation. In 1995, Ms. Lauche obtained an MA in psychology at the University of Berlin. In 2001, she completed a PhD at the University of Potsdam. Before coming to Delft, she was a researcher at the University of Aberdeen, the University of Munich, and ETH Zürich.

Digital addicts
Students in the United States are addicted to social media. If they’re denied access to Facebook, Twitter and other chat forums for longer than one day they begin exhibiting the type of withdrawal symptoms usually associated with substance abusers. Researchers at the University of Maryland denied 200 students access to internet, telephones, computers and other digital media for one day. After 24 hours, the test subjects displayed the same withdrawal symptoms as alcoholics and drug addicts: withdrawal, anxiety and nervousness. The test subjects later described their feelings on a special weblog: “I was sitting with thousands of my fellow students and the impossibility of communicating with others via internet or phone was almost unbearable”, wrote one student. According to research coordinator, Susan Moeller, most of the students felt they could no longer get in touch with friends and family: “Students’ lives are so inextricably linked with digital media that refraining from using modern technology is tantamount to renouncing your social life.”

Ministry of technology
During a debate with student political party, Oras, TU Delft’s president, Dirk Jan van den Berg, called for setting up one ministry that would be responsible for technology and innovation. Van den Berg said innovation must be better organized, from research to the market, and advocated strengthening the 3TU partnership between Holland’s three universities of technology He also held Switzerland up as a model, saying “it’s not for nothing that the universities in Zurich and Lausanne are higher ranked.”

Enrolments up
The economic crisis has apparently had no effect on the increase in the numbers of students enrolling for higher education. Student enrolment figures this year were higher than usual. Leading university administrators, including Utrecht University’s chairperson, Yvonne van Rooy, had said this increase was perhaps due to the economic crisis. Researchers from the Research for Policy Institute disagreed, however, instead attributing this rise to demographic shifts and to students graduating in less time than previously.

Smarter by 2020
By the year 2020, two out of every five EU citizens must hold higher education degrees, according to an agreement recently reached by the EU’s member states. This standard should be easily reached by the Netherlands, according to recent national statistical trends. At present, 27 percent of the Dutch population holds higher education degrees, while eight years ago that figure stood at 21 percent. Of all the Dutch people aged between 25 and 35, some 38 percent currently have degrees from universities or polytechnics.

No answer
The World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently concluded a study on cancer risks posed by the technology inside cellphones. The team of 21 scientists studied some 13,000 cellphone users in 13 countries. “The results really don’t allow us to conclude that there is any risk associated with mobile phone use, but… it is also premature to say that there is no risk associated with it”, the IARC’s director Christopher Wild told Reuters. The ten-year study cost 19.2 million euros.