Binding recommendation of the continuation of studies has mainly drawbacks

Many universities of applied sciences and virtually all universities impose a strict requirement on their first-year students: if they do not achieve a certain number of credits, they receive a negative binding study advice. They are expelled from the programme.

The BSA threshold is often around forty credits, but some programmes require sixty credits – their students must achieve this in a single year. If they fail to do so, the best they can hope for is to start a different programme or move to another educational institution.

This ‘shuffling’ of students has long been the subject of criticism. Students who finish just below the BSA threshold do, in fact, stand a good chance of obtaining a degree. Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, for example, observed this after the coronavirus pandemic, when the BSA rules were temporarily suspended. VU University Amsterdam also reported this last year.

‘Significant disadvantages’

In a study published (in Dutch) on 30 March in the economics journal ESB, the conclusion is even more stark: for both students and educational institutions, the BSA offers few advantages and ‘significant disadvantages’.

Statistically speaking, half of the students who are expelled under the BSA would have completed their degree anyway. This is the conclusion reached by PhD candidate and economist Sander de Vries of VU Amsterdam, based on Statistics Netherlands (CBS) data covering 700,000 university bachelor’s students across 351 degree programmes. Never before has the impact of the BSA been studied across such a wide range of programmes and students.

‘Nothing stands in the way of politicians simply abolishing the BSA’

The National Student Union (LSVb) sees the study as confirmation of its own position: the BSA mainly causes stress, whilst delivering little else. “Nothing stands in the way of politicians simply abolishing the BSA,” says LSVb Chair Maaike Krom in a response.

Universities see things differently, according to a spokesperson for Universities of the Netherlands (UNL). “Students themselves experience the BSA far more often as positive than negative. During the Covid years, we saw that students who continued their studies with fewer credits often dropped out later on.”

A frequently cited argument in favour of the BSA is that students with little chance of success sometimes drag their feet for a very long time in their degree programme if they cannot be sent away after the first year. During the Covid years, those students were indeed able to continue their studies and only came to the conclusion much later that they might not be suited to their chosen course. This new study does not make clear exactly how many students this concerns.

‘No weak students’

Researcher Sander de Vries looked at first-year students who started between 1994 and 2014. During those years, an increasing number of programmes introduced a binding study advice system – until, by 2014, all 351 bachelor’s programmes examined had a BSA.

‘Dropouts due to the BSA are not necessarily weak students’

For each programme individually, the researcher examined students’ chances of success before and after the introduction of the grade requirement. From the CBS figures, he was also able to deduce how many dropouts eventually went on to obtain a degree in a different programme. ‘The results show that dropouts due to the BSA are not necessarily weak students,’ writes the researcher.

One of the aims of the BSA is to get more students into the right place, emphasises the UNL in its response. However, the research does not show that this is successful. “It is not clear that [BSA dropouts] perform better in a different programme,” it states.

On the contrary: overall, 1.7% fewer students are graduating as a result of the introduction of the BSA. On the other hand, students who do meet the grade requirement graduate on average three weeks earlier. But that acceleration is ‘statistically indistinguishable from zero’, the study states.

A politically contentious issue

A number of major universities of applied sciences have already abandoned the BSA, partly following criticism from former Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf of D66. He felt that the system primarily causes stress for students.

Dijkgraaf wanted to introduce new rules to relax the credit requirement nationwide, but this met with significant resistance from the universities. Even his own coalition party, the VVD, was not enthusiastic about it at the time.

When the VVD later formed the Schoof cabinet with NSC, PVV and BBB, Dijkgraaf’s proposal was immediately scrapped. They agreed not to relax the BSA rules. The new coalition agreement between D66, the VVD and the CDA contains no provisions regarding the BSA.

HOP, Olmo Linthorst