Integere student scoort beter

Dat schrijft promovendus Anita de Vries aan de Vrije Universiteit op grond van onderzoek onder 1200 studenten. Volgens haar veronderstellen onderwijsinstellingen ten onrechte dat intelligentie en aanleg bepalen hoe succesvol studenten zijn.

Niet alleen halen integere studenten hogere cijfers, ze spieken minder, plegen geen plagiaat en leveren opdrachten vaker op tijd in. “Het is tijd dat onderwijsinstellingen en studenten bewust worden van de rol die iemands persoonlijkheid speelt bij studiesucces”, zegt De Vries.

Zij heeft ook specifiek naar de groep allochtone studenten gekeken. Zij bleken meer studieproblemen te hebben en vaker hun opleiding staken, terwijl ze even integer waren als autochtone studenten. Hun studiesucces hangt kennelijk minder samen met hun karakter.

“Dat suggereert dat de persoonlijke omstandigheden van allochtone studenten moeilijker zijn”, zegt De Vries. “Ze krijgen bijvoorbeeld minder steun van hun ouders of hebben geen goede plek om te studeren.”

Om de integriteit van studenten te meten, liet De Vries hen een persoonlijkheidstest invullen. Daar stonden stellingen op, waarvan de studenten moesten zeggen hoezeer die op henzelf van toepassing waren. Bijvoorbeeld: “Als het mij beter uitkomt, lieg ik wel eens.”

De Vries adviseert niet om de integriteit van studenten bij te schaven, “want dat is heel moeilijk”. Maar minder integere studenten blijken ook minder vaak een opleiding te kiezen die hen werkelijk interesseert. Ze geven de voorkeur aan opleidingen waar ze status en geld mee denken te verwerven.

Wie een studie kiest voor het geld en de status, heeft uiteindelijk vaker moeite om de opleiding af te maken. De Vries pleit daarom voor een betere intake en begeleiding in het begin van de opleiding.

“These floods were of the kind that occurs once every two thousand years”, says bridge expert, Wilfred Molenaar, of the faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences’ hydraulic engineering section. Molenaar, who followed the events via internet, is not surprised that some bridges constructed only decades ago collapsed after such heavy rainfall: “One of the recent storm days became the wettest on record. This huge amount of rain alone would have been enough to result in a dangerous flood wave through the river system. Another contributing factor may have been an increasing area of built-up land during the last decennia. Built-up land causes rain water to run off the land into the rivers at a much faster rate. If such a storm had occurred in the past, the water would’ve reached the rivers more gradually.” 

“A once every two thousand years weather event would also cause damage in Holland”, Molenaar says. “In Holland we accept for instance that dikes along the IJssel will fail during extreme events that statistically only happen once every 1,250 years.”

Molenaar thinks that, at the time of their design and construction, a considerable number of the bridges both in England and the Netherlands were not meant to cope with extreme weather events: “Even a century ago bridges were still built to resist the load of storms that people could remember having happened. No statistics came into play.”
Judging from the television images, the bridges in Cumbria seem to have been constructed a fairly long time ago. Maintenance and upgrading of (old) bridges generally is the responsibility of governmental bodies that must  work with tight budgets. The same goes for the Netherlands. “But”, Molenaar adds, “fortunately for good economic transport reasons the vast majority of bridges here have been modernised in the recent decades, or at least they’ve been kept up to standard.”

And the Dutch are also lucky in another way. “In the Netherlands, most bridges, if not all, were built on pile foundations that extend deep into the ground, which is a necessity when building on soft soils”, Molenaar explains. “It looks as if the collapsed bridges in Cumbria had their piers on a shallow foundation. That makes the old English bridges more susceptible to erosion than old Dutch bridges.”

Erosion occurring at the base of the bridges’ arches  probably caused a lot of damage, Molenaar believes: “A bridge collapses when the foundation is eroded away. Moreover, the surface of the piers – the vertical parts of the bridge – that the water pushes against becomes bigger and this creates more momentum.”
Bridges that weren’t high enough to remain above Friday’s rising flood waters had an even more difficult time. Molenaar: “The water level rose so high that at certain places it also pushed against the bridge deck.”