HBO employee participation requires more time and money
The participation councils of universities of applied sciences are sounding the alarm. They demand more time and money to do their job well, especially now that they have to participate in the decision-making on the base grant millions.
Image: NHL / Stenden Hogeschool
The differences with employee participation at universities are enormous. In higher professional education, employee representatives are often only remunerated for six hours a week or less, while they are sometimes allowed to work full-time at universities. This is no longer possible, warns the Student Council for Participation (SOM).
The councils are getting busier and busier. They are already allowed to co-decide on the main lines of the budget and in the future the 'basic grant millions' will be added to that. The employee participation council must ensure that the money is well spent. And that was not at all self-evident in recent years, the Court of Audit showed. Here and there, the councils barely affected the extra millions that were already there.
Students should be well prepared in the negotiations with administrators, says SOM director Carline van Breugel. That takes time and space and is lacking now. "They die at work."
Ridiculous
Those who are active in employee participation are paid six hours per week to major universities of applied sciences such as the HvA, the Hogeschool Utrecht and Avans Hogeschool. By way of comparison: council members are given 32 hours at the university. Where students at the university often take a gap year to devote themselves full-time to employee participation, HBO graduates have to make do with less than one day a week. “Bizarre and ridiculous”, Van Breugel calls the difference between higher vocational education and university education.
“Bizarre and ridiculous”, says SOM director Carline van Breugel about the difference in time for participation between HBO and WO.
The problem has been around for some time, but for SOM the measure is now full. “This is no longer possible,” says Van Breugel. There must now be a change, says the SOM, which believes that students in councils should be paid at least twelve hours a week.
The participation club calls on students to fight for their place within the university of applied sciences. Van Breugel: “Councils hardly negotiate their hours now because they are simply too busy with other things. That must come to an end. ”
Information backlog
Students in the participation have the task of supervising the board and must therefore always be aware of what is going on. They know the education and examination regulations and regularly meet in committees and with the Executive Board.
In order to understand and control decision-making, students also need to be refined in all kinds of courses and training. The SOM partly organizes this and also holds a meeting every month where employee representatives from all over the country are updated on current developments in The Hague.
“Those meetings are not compulsory, but in practice you quickly walk one
information backlog when no one from your council is there,” says chairman Tariq Sewbaransingh of the National Student Union. “The directors work full-time on the latest developments. If you don't want to trust them on their blue eyes about what is being agreed nationally and how that should be interpreted, then as a councilor you have to keep track of what is happening."
A lot of work
A lot of work, but it is about more than just extra hours, says the SOM. The universities of applied sciences must also ensure in other areas that the employee participation body can properly fulfill its tasks. For example, the timetable does not always take into account the meeting agenda and the students in the mr are not allowed to miss any lessons. Moreover, the institutions should provide better training and official support, SOM believes.
