Postponement of binding study advice for all HBO students
This academic year, too, first-year students of higher professional education do not have to meet the BSA standard due to the corona crisis. Universities still do not see such a generic leniency measure. They leave the decision to the study programs.
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In mid-March, it became apparent that colleges and universities have different views on the application of the binding study advice (BSA) in corona time. The colleges soon decided that the BSA should be postponed for all freshmen. Everyone was allowed to move on to the second year and catch up on the missing subjects later. A few colleges even suspended BSA completely.
Different course
Some of the universities are pursuing a different course. Wageningen for example, lowered the standard for bsa, but did not abolish it. Other universities started to check whether the delay caused by students was really due to the corona crisis. First analyzes also showed that students in the first corona wave had hardly obtained any fewer credits.
In yesterday updated 'service document'this different approach is again apparent for higher education. HBO is already granting all first-years a postponement of the BSA, but the universities see no reason to do so. “Since university education is almost entirely offered to first-year students and there was hardly any delay in first-year students during the past academic year, universities do not expect any study delay among current first-years.”
Stuck
They continue to closely monitor the study offer and study progress of students. If necessary, “a specific training” will still take a leniency measure for first-years. And if individual students get in trouble, the BSA can always be postponed, but that's business as usual.
The National Student Union is disappointed. “The situation for the current freshmen has only become more complicated, because they have no education at all outside the corona crisis,” says chairman Lyle Muns. He also finds it strange that the universities of applied sciences grant generic deferment and the universities do not.
In response to the corona crisis, there is a lot of discussion about the BSA. The Lower House wants Minister Van Engelshoven to talk to the institutions about its abolition. She likes it, but higher education has serious reservations.
