Students who would ordinarily have too few study points to continue on to the second year of their study programme are now allowed to proceed because of the special circumstances surrounding the coronavirus. The BSA standard needs to be fulfilled in that second academic year, however.
The Erasmus University is known for the strictest BSA in the country: across the various study programmes, every first-year student has to attain sixty points in year one. Medicine is the only exemption, as it ‘only’ requires its students to get 45 points in their first year.
It is not yet entirely clear what the arrangement will entail for EUR students. “Universities will put in place their own specific guidelines in order to decide which students the arrangement applies to”, states an EUR spokesperson. The university hopes to have all the details of those guidelines nailed down for every faculty next week, so that all first-year students know exactly what this will mean for them.
Additional student loan options
Should students run into financial difficulty, because of them losing their job or part of their salary for instance, they can increase the amount of their monthly loan with DUO. This can even be done ‘retroactively from the start of the academic year’. The ministry also points to the option of applying for tuition fee loans. If those are not enough, students can contact DUO for a solution tailored to their needs.
Graduates can use their payment-free period. If they have already used that, they can also contact DUO, who will ‘be accommodating in dealing with the situation and apply tailored solutions’.
Application deadline postponed
Anyone who wants to apply for a new study programme, usually has to do so before 1 May. This deadline has now been moved up one month to 1 June.
Some programmes use an admission procedure or study choice check. As these procedures require large groups of people to come together, they are now suspended due to the corona measures. The agreements state that universities are no longer obliged to offer this study choice check, but many still want to do so.
