Short news
Actually, there were two petitions against the fine for delayed students. One was from opposition party GroenLinks-PvdA, the other from a coalition of the National Union of Students, FNV Young & United, broadcaster BNNVARA and news platform De Marker. The signatures of the two petitions were combined.
Even the youth organisations of government parties VVD and NSC oppose the long-study fine that students will soon face if they are more than a year out of their bachelor’s or master’s programme. Colleges and universities are also adamantly opposed to the introduction.
On Friday 13 September, the cabinet will announce its coalition programme. There are no signs yet that the plan for the langstudeerboete will be withdrawn.
HOP, Hein Cuppen
On 1 October, Rob Mudde will step down as Vice Rector Magnificus of TU Delft. Pending the appointment of a definitive successor, professor of control engineering and Pro Vice Rector Magnificus for Joint Educational Affairs, Hans Hellendoorn will be acting as a replacement for the position of Vice President Education.
Although the process of finding a successor to Rob Mudde is in full swing, a successor has not yet been found. Hans Hellendoorn has therefore been appointed as observer for his position. The Supervisory Board writes this in an email to all TU Delft employees.
Hellendoorn will not become a formal member of the Executive Board, but will be mandated to carry out a number of tasks of the current Vice Rector Magnificus. For instance, he will take on the coordination of education policy, student community and student wellbeing. He will also join the monthly meetings with the central student council.
It is especially young highly educated people that use ChatGPT or similar programmes, reports CBS, the statistics agency. But many older people also find their way to AI.
A note in English, a plan of action, a simple illustration … It is sometimes tempting to turn to programmes like ChatGPT or Copilot for help. By 2024, 61% of highly educated under 25s have done so at some point, reports CBS. Of the highly educated up to 35 years of age, roughly half have used artificial intelligence on occasion. The percentages are also significant in other age groups.
Harmful
Since the advent of ChatGPT, critics have expressed concern about its impact on education and research. For instance, a teacher tweeted last month that her students were even using ChatGPT for this simple writing task: ‘Introduce yourself and explain what your expectations are of this subject.’
Internet pioneer Marleen Stikker argued last year that educational institutions should claim damages from the tech companies that spread AI without batting an eye. ‘All the work we do in teaching and research is being damaged. The cost is huge.’
HOP, Bas Belleman
The Windesheim University of Applied Sciences made a mistake. A reminder for one student accidentally went to 18 thousand students. In the mail, the college threatened a collection agency.
It was a stern email. A student was in arrears with 193 euros of tuition fees and had to pay quickly or the university would call in a collection agency. Registration for the new academic year was also not possible.
Apology This e-mail accidentally went to 18 thousand students, reports newspaper the Stentor. Windesheim has some 26 thousand students and is among the ten largest colleges in the country.
An apology followed within an hour, but some students paid immediately. They will get the money refunded this week, the college promises. (HOP, BB)
The organisers of Westerpop have decided to discontinue the free pop festival in Delft. After 35 successful editions, it seems that keeping the event going is no longer financially viable.
According to the organisation, persistent inflation and the upcoming VAT increase in 2026 make it impossible to organise the festival ‘in its current form’. The risk of bankruptcy, mainly due to disappointing revenues due to bad weather, has become too high. An application for a guarantee from the Municipality of Delft to support the festival in case of bad weather was rejected.
The option of ticket sales was also considered. But that, according to the organisation, is not in line with ‘the original vision of an accessible and free festival’. As a result, last year’s anniversary edition unexpectedly became the very last edition of the event.
Professor Aukje Hassoldt will step down as dean at the Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management (TPM) from 1 December 2024. She will continue her career as dean at the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Hassoldt studied physics at VU University Amsterdam and then gained board experience at Rijkswaterstaat, TNO and RIVM, among others, before taking office as dean at TU Delft in October 2019. At the time, she found a Faculty that had had four different (interim) deans in four years.
‘I leave behind a wonderful faculty and look back on a great period at TU Delft, during which I was able to work with many fantastic people,’ she reflects in a message on the university website.
Despite an earlier decision to stop cooperating with the fossil industry, Utrecht University receives €1.5 million from oil company BP for research into renewable energy. This causes confusion: is the university ignoring its own rules?
After all kinds of student protests and discussion groups, the university decided in July 2023 not to establish any more ties with fossil companies. Unless they demonstrably contribute to the energy transition, in line with the climate goals of the Paris Agreement.
This poses a problem: to meet the Paris goals, oil and gas companies will have to take less fossil energy out of the ground in the coming years, and BP wants more. Nevertheless, the collaboration with BP, which was agreed in as early as 2022, fits within the energy transition, says professor of catalysts and energy materials for sustainable energy Petra de Jongh. She stresses that the research is aimed at converting waste into circular fuels.
Criticism
But according to Linda Knoester of Solid Sustainability Research, a Leiden research firm that studies the influence of the fossil industry on science and education, it seems that the university did not include the Paris goals in assessing the collaboration.
And this despite the university itself writing that there is a climate crisis – an emergency even. So a systemic change is badly needed, Knoester notes. “The IPCC notes that rapid and far-reaching transitions are needed for a liveable future. But research on liquid fuels aligns well with oil industry interests and actually perpetuates them.” (HOP, OL)
How can you set up a reliable energy system on the road to 2050 whose sources – solar and wind power – are variable? The answer will probably be a combination of market design, grid arrangements and energy policy. But the question remains how to do this. This is also the subject of the extensive MODES (Market Organisation of the Dutch Energy System) research programme that was awarded NWO funding of almost EUR 4 million this July.
The main applicant is Laurens de Vries, Professor of Complex Energy Transitions at the Faculty of Technology, Policy & Management (TPM). Other applicants from TU Delft are Kenneth Bruninx (TPM), Aad Correljé (TPM) and Matthijs de Weerdt (Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science). There are also 17 co-applicants from various universities and universities of applied sciences in addition to more than 50 partners working in government and industry.
MODES will investigate the affordability, sustainability, fairness and transparency of different future energy systems. It will research feasible market designs for electricity and green hydrogen from offshore wind farms. And it will also simulate the impact of policies on the future energy market.
The research into the design of future energy systems is part of the National Science Agenda (NWA), which was put together by Dutch citizens. Believing that knowledge is key to societal impact, the NWA encourages knowledge production through collaboration between government bodies, researchers and civil society organisations.
TU Delft’s executive board (EB) has cancelled a planned meeting with Students and Staff for Safety. Both parties did not agree on the conditions to hold a ‘safe conversation’ and how to do so transparently, but say they are still open to talk.
The group, which was formed by students and staff in response to the Inspection Report on social safety, and the EB were due to talk to each other for the first time on Thursday 29 August at the EB’s invitation. Students and Staff for Safety wanted to talk about self-reflection and accountability, among other things, as well as ongoing issues of social safety and democracy.
Transparency
The Students and Staff for Safety members preferred to do this in the presence of Delta, according to a statement they posted online on Friday, ‘because the Plan for Change indicates that transparency is important to achieve a socially safe environment’ and because the action group ‘represents a large part of the TU Delft community and wants to inform them through Delta’. The members also wanted the spoken language to be English and for one of them to chair the meeting.
But it did not come to this meeting, as a few hours beforehand, the group received an e-mail with a cancellation. According to Students and Staff for Safety, that e-mail stated that ‘the presence of a Delta reporter did not feel safe’.
Unsafe
The cancellation follows an earlier proposal by the EB to ‘discuss in smaller committee what is needed to have a safe conversation’. ‘The group did not comply to this and the EB therefore decided to cancel the planned conversation with the action group,’ a TU Delft spokesperson said.
‘Such an initial conversation should be able to be held in confidentiality. A conversation in which everyone feels comfortable to speak out freely. The presence of a journalist does not yet fit into a setting where what is needed to make a conversation safe for all involved has yet to be determined.’
According to the spokesperson, the EB has suggested having another objective party present at the conversation, such as an ombuds officer. ‘That does not mean, by the way, that Delta would never be welcome at meetings, or that an open and transparent report cannot be made afterwards.’
Open to conversation
Both the EB and the group are still open to conversation. For Students and Staff for Safety, the presence of an independent, third party publicly reporting on the meeting remains a requirement in this regard. ‘This, according to the group, can also be a person other than a Delta reporter ‘as long as it is a party we both trust and who is allowed to make the minutes of the meeting public,’’ a member of the group says.
- Do you want to know more about the Education Inspectorate’s report and everything related to it? Then check out Delta’s dossier on the matter.
People with a higher education level are more willing to donate organs after their death. This is according to new figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).
Among the academic educated people, 46 percent consent to organ donation, compared to only 23 percent of the practically trained people. In contrast, 40 percent of the practically trained explicitly refuse organ donation, compared to only 21 percent among the university educated.
Origin also plays a role: 64 percent of people with parents not born in the Netherlands refuse organ donation, compared to 34 percent of people of Dutch descent. This difference could lead to a shortage of donors within certain population groups.
New law
To combat the shortage of donors, a new law has been in force since July 2020: those who do not pass on a choice are registered as ‘no objection’. Since then, many more people have registered their choice. It went from 49 to 72 percent of adults, according to CBS. (HOP, BB)
