Student complaints about misconduct are the tip of the iceberg
The Education Inspectorate estimates that approximately 33 thousand students have come into contact with transgressive behavior during their education. That is one in 25 students. It rarely comes to an official complaint.
Picture: Type tank
Ajax and The Voice have attracted a lot of attention in recent weeks because of cross-border behaviour, but it also occurs in higher education. It is not without reason that the Inspectorate launched an investigation last year, including into art and fashion courses.
The cabinet has now announced that more will be done against sexually transgressive behaviour, but there are also other forms of misconduct, such as intimidation and discrimination.
Respect
Now the Education Inspectorate has looked into it. In a concise fact sheet contains the results of a survey completed by more than 1.500 students. Not all incidents come to the fore, it turns out.
Most respondents find their education safe enough. Students dare to express their opinion and teachers treat them with respect, they believe. Yet 7 percent think otherwise. 8 percent of students also see bullying and exclusion from their study programme.
Most respondents find their education safe enough
Discrimination when looking for an internship is less visible (62 percent have no opinion), but that also occurs: more than one in five has experienced this within their study programme.
heard or experienced it yourself.
Shocking
And what about transgressive behaviour? Two percent of the students prefer not to say anything about it, but four percent have experienced it themselves. That four percent (60 of the 1.500 respondents) would translate to more than 33 thousand students.
“A shocking number,” says Ama Boahene of the National Student Union. “Action is needed to prevent students from becoming victims of undesirable behaviour.” She wants, among other things, better reporting procedures and training about social safety.
The LSVb wants better reporting procedures and training about social safety
Her counterpart Lisanne de Roos of the Interstedelijk Studenten Overleg argues for better monitoring of social safety: “Every student who experiences something like this is one too many.”
Any student who goes through something like this is one too many
This monitoring does not seem superfluous. In more than half of the cases, educational institution employees were guilty of the misbehavior, according to the students, and the problem remains largely invisible. It is true that the majority discusses such an event with someone from within or outside the educational institution, but a quarter does not do anything with it at all; only three of the sixty respondents made an official complaint. One of them went to the police.
Why so few students file an official complaint? Half think it makes no sense and almost one in five do not know where to go with a complaint. Some students tick: 'My complaint was not that important'.
The Inspectorate held further discussions with a number of students. One of them said: “I have had conversations with the supervisor of the teacher who intimidated me, and with the confidential adviser. I found this process so unpleasant that I have therefore not filed an official complaint.” Another said: "I was advised not to share my experience with others and certainly not with the media."
Limitations
The research has its limitations, the inspectorate realizes, if only because of the low response rate of 15 percent: the research was distributed among ten thousand HBO and WO students. Perhaps a repetition is necessary to also get an answer from 'hard to reach target groups'.
Too few students with a migration background completed the survey to be able to say anything about that group. Students from the behavior & society and economics sectors are also underrepresented, as are students who have been working for more than four years.
However, the Inspectorate already concluded that institutions should improve the awareness and accessibility of the complaints procedure. The Inspectorate will soon publish a separate fact sheet about the students' perception of the complaints procedures.
Monitoring
In addition, higher education must monitor social safety more closely, both nationally and at the level of the institution. “Transparency about the figures and insight into the risk factors can make a preventive contribution to social safety in Dutch higher education”, according to the Inspectorate.
And if there are indeed indications of a socially unsafe situation, then you should conduct an independent investigation into the organizational culture, says the Inspectorate.
What is 'cross-border' is not defined in this study. The students had to estimate that for themselves. This is a first poll, a spokesperson said. The Inspectorate is conducting further investigations into fashion and art courses. “Of course we go into more detail about what exactly is going on and what has been done about it.”
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