{"id":109622,"date":"2020-02-20T11:40:38","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T10:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=109622"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:24:43","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:24:43","slug":"house-of-representatives-supports-return-of-lottery-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2020\/02\/20\/house-of-representatives-supports-return-of-lottery-system\/","title":{"rendered":"House of Representatives supports return of lottery system"},"content":{"rendered":"

The House of Representatives would support the return of the lottery system as a selection tool for study programmes with a restricted capacity. On Tuesday, a majority voted to reverse the ban.<\/p>\n

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A full house during this IBA lecture<\/span><\/p>

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Some training programmes only admit a limited number of first-year students, due to the lack of lecturers or facilities, for example. In the past, a lottery system was used for such programmes, but that has been banned<\/a> since 2017.<\/p>\n

Students now wanting to embark on a study programme with a restricted capacity must first be selected. This is not without consequences: there are claims that selection increases the pressure on school pupils to perform well. It can also lead to unequal opportunities, for young people with a migrant background or from low-income families, for example.<\/p>\n

During a debate in the House of Representatives last week, D66 member Jan Paternotte therefore proposed<\/a> scrapping the ban on the lottery system for study programmes with restricted capacity. Along with the CDA, his party submitted a motion<\/a>. That motion got a majority today. Governing parties VVD and ChristenUnie voted against it.<\/p>\n

Medicine<\/h2>

Among medical students, opinions about decentralised selection vary. Earlier this year, the lobby organisation for medical students questioned<\/a> over three thousand members. The results showed that one in ten followed a \u2013 sometimes very expensive \u2013 course to improve their chances of being selected. Over forty students said that they had purposely repeated 5vwo to obtain a higher average exam grade.<\/p>\n

The lobby organisation finds these developments \u2018concerning\u2019 and is therefore appealing for the reintroduction of the lottery system. \u201cAnyone with a suitable prior education should be eligible for admission to study medicine. The danger of the current system is that it won\u2019t create a diverse population of doctors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Advantages<\/h2>

Whether the decentralised selection produces better or worse doctors is not known. In 2017, researchers from Groningen University concluded<\/a> that the study results of selected and lottery-drawn medical students did not vary much.<\/p>\n

But according to Maastricht University, selected medical students did perform<\/a> better. This may be because school pupils there are not tested on knowledge but only on competencies.<\/p>\n\n\t

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De redactie<\/h2>\n\t\t\n\t\t
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