Strengthening of Program Committees

Update 29-11-2016
From the 1st of january 2017 the law that determines the governance structure and co-decision within the university (Wet op Hoger onderwijs en Wetenschappelijk onderzoek, WHW) will be amended by the ‘Wet Versterking bestuurskracht.’ This amendment law changes 3 important things; Program committees obtain an official co-decision position, which means they have to consent with specific parts of the Teaching and Examination regulation; the possibility to do a tuition fee free board year, while keeping your right on the student-ov and loan from DUO , is made official by law; and co-decision gets a formal say in the appointment procedure of a new member of the Board of Directors. The way this law is implemented in our University is discussed during the University council meeting this Thursday.

Lijst Calimero emphasized the importance of a clear procedure for the appointment of a new member of the Board of Directors. Besides we want the Board of Directors to implement the new form of doing a tuiton fee free board year before the law enters into force in January.

Nevertheless, the Board of Directors did not yet decide on both issues. Therefore we stay in contact with the Board of Directors until the end of the year and push them to make sure there will be a decision.
The most important change however, is the position of programme committees. There new position has to be formulated by the faculties. To help the faculties and to create a consistent policy throughout the university, we wrote a memo. This memo contains central guidelines for strengthening the program committees within the different faculties. This memo was received positively by the Board of Directors. There answer to the memo was also discussed in the University council meeting. The Board of Directors agreed with a lot of our proposals, for example the indirect way of electing the programme committees via de faculty councils. Furthermore we will enter the discussion with the communication department and legal department on how to support the program committees and broaden there visibility. The Board of Directors also agreed with us to send the reaction to all the faculty boards.

The primary task of program committees is to guarantee the quality of education. For this reason a good implementation of the WVb is of utmost importance for Lijst Calimero. We hope to constructively contribute to the implementation of this amendment law in the coming months.