We asked Marcel Vreeswijk, Vice Dean of Education, if he can already tell us something about the plans.

What is the cause of the faculty's expected budget shortfalls?

Marcel: “The faculty has a number of challenges to tackle in the area of education. We are already seeing a decline in enrollment, particularly in undergraduate programs, while demographics and choices by VWO students for an NT profile predict that the decline will continue. A structural decline in enrollment ultimately causes a budget reduction for faculty for education. This is something we must take into account now.

We have 27 programs with over 7,000 students. We want to keep those programs up and running, that's the goal. We still stand behind the whole range of the exact sciences that we educate our students in. That includes just two new programs (the Bachelor of Science, Technology and Innovation, and in the master's Quantum Computer Science). If the enrollment projections are reliable, we can maintain our full program portfolio. But that does mean that we now have to work on the organization of education to ensure that.”

How does the faculty plan to do this?

“Our principle is that we are going to do that with the people we have. We are in the process of generating plans and ideas to cover the costs. Based on current data, we see that if we put our shoulders to the wheel now and make those ideas concrete, we can continue to offer our programs. That does not mean that everything will stay the same: things will change, for example, in what we do, how we do something, or who does something.

To be concrete, in the coming months we are going to realign our education. Fewer working groups will be needed because there is a smaller inflow of students. In some courses or subjects, group sizes will be normalized. This will be at the expense of the number of student assistantships we will offer. How many and when this will happen we haven't decided yet. In addition, the share of academic staff in teaching will increase where possible. This is obviously positive for the quality of teaching and fits well with our premise that teaching should be research-based. Some processes will be harmonized with fewer or no exceptions per course.”

Will the content of the programs also change?

“We don't know yet how that will work out concretely. What we are thinking about is to make room within Academic Skills education (AV) for AI in education and use modern GenAI techniques in our academic skills. This is not a cut, but it is a change in education. So what choices will we make about what we no longer offer? We need to look critically at that too.

Small electives will be avoided or, where possible, merged into a larger course. With the note that we have room for exceptions if an elective is the only portal to a large research domain with many opportunities.

It is also no longer a secret that Amsterdam-wide honors education will be revised. What will come in return and when we don't know. Of course, we also depend on what happens in politics and the world.”

What opportunities are there to work toward a stable inflow of students?

“Across the whole line, we continue to look at study efficiency, with better connections between VWO and university. We are also working to encourage connection and flow through from Bachelors to Masters: if the students we already have in house go on to do a Master's at the Faculty of Science, that can be positive.

We will have to tap into new target groups. This can be done, for example, by admitting other profiles to our faculty, or by admitting foreign students for certain programs. These are still ideas, not concrete plans. In the coming months we will have to give them hands and feet. We will keep a finger on the pulse to see whether measures are implemented properly and have the effect we are aiming for. And also whether our assumptions correspond with reality.

For now, we assume that with hard work, opportunity creation and flexible use of the people we have in our faculty, we will still have a good future.”

What can students do to help?

There are some concrete things students can do to help us. For example, we have very high costs when students register for electives and don't show up, for which we do schedule rooms and staff for. If students were more conscious about that and only register if they actually intend to attend those lectures or work groups, it would make a huge difference. Then we also don’t have to work on rules that would interfere too much with our free choice culture.

I would also like to encourage students to come to work classes. Figures show that participation (social and content wise) is the key to success. It will be searching for a balance where you don't have to mandate attendance, but students do show up. If students feel part of the community, that has positive effects on study efficiency. There are of course other ways to feel involved besides lectures and work groups, such as participation in a study association, the Faculty Student Council and the Programme Committee for example.”