Cabinet rejects student selection
The government will not allow universities and colleges (HBOs) to recruit only the best students. The cabinet will only introduce ‘intake interviews’.
A diploma at VWO level provides access to university courses, and a HAVO-level diploma, to a HBO. This will not change, said Education Minister Ronald Plasterk after the weekly cabinet meeting.
Plasterk was thereby signalling his rejection of student selection ‘at the gateway.’ It can also continue to happen in the future that, for fixed-intake courses, students who just managed to pass their VWO exam can go to university but cum laude VWO school-leavers cannot if they are unlucky in a lottery.
Plasterk does want universities and HBOs to hold intake interviews with students before they begin a course. They can then be given information about the exact contents of the course and what demands it imposes. Plasterk thereby wants to avoid secondary school pupils choosing a course that later turns out to be too difficult, reducing dropouts at universities and HBOs, he said after Friday’s cabinet meeting.
According to Plasterk, the intake talks are not intended as a form of pre-selection. But they do have a different character than the open days that universities and colleges currently organise. These serve mainly to recruit students, while the intake interviews must also point out possible risks, he stated.
Source: NIS News, 11 May 2008
The cabinet wants first to experiment with the intake interviews. Plasterk is not considering allocating funds for his plans, because he believes preventing dropouts will yield savings that cover the costs.
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