{"id":9773,"date":"2013-06-07T12:47:05","date_gmt":"2013-06-07T12:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress72\/?p=23964"},"modified":"2026-01-20T10:32:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T09:32:39","slug":"worries-in-the-iss-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2013\/06\/07\/worries-in-the-iss-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Worries in the ISS family"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Institute of Social Studies in The Hague \u2013 part of EUR \u2013 has to face heavy budget cuts. For efficiency reasons, part of the employees will be relocated to Rotterdam, to the displeasure of many. \u201cIf you want to achieve something together with us, you will have to make sure we have a feeling of co-ownership of the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Text: Mieke Fiers<\/i><\/p>\n

\u201cJust how many students must have burst out in tears in this room,\u201d asks master student Leny Hernandez with a smile. We are sitting in student counsellor Martin Blok\u2019s office at the Institute of Social Studies. The walls are decorated with many colourful souvenirs from all over the world. In front of the door lies an orange carpet, a prize the ISS won for the warm welcome it extends to foreign students. The other students in the room acknowledge Hernandez\u2019 statement with a nod. They too stormed into the room in panic at some point \u2013 or to share the haps, ask a question, for a simple chat.<\/p>\n

All doors are open at the ISS, and everyone, be it staff, researchers or students, is at home in the stately but colourful building in the centre of The Hague. It is a home away from home, as many ISSers call it. Every September about 170 master students from lesser-developed countries all over the world come to the ISS for an intensive 15-month programme. They are under a lot of pressure to graduate within the given term. Pressure from their families, their community, the organisations they work for. A few had never left their country before, some leave their children back home, many have problems with Dutch bureaucracy; insurance and residence permits. Martin Blok calls the students a high-risk group.<\/p>\n

What makes the ISS special is more than the exceptionally amiable support, the family feel to it, and the numerous activities, including: seminars, cultural evenings, debates, or weekly choir rehearsals. The entire educational model of the ISS is based on socially cohesive community where effective and creative learning is the norm, as ISS dean Leo de Haan proudly describes. This is one of the reasons why many students choose for the ISS.<\/p>\n

Destination Rotterdam<\/b><\/p>\n

But there are concerns among students, staff, PhDs, and even alumni \u2013 who launched an online petition. The ISS will have to undergo reorganization due to heavy budget cuts. The plans foresee a large part of the supporting services to be outsourced to the EUR\u2019s Shared Service Centres (SSCs). Work processes as well as employees will therefore be relocated to Rotterdam. That includes the back office: tasks that do not require contact with students or staff. Tasks such as registering grades or making invoices. Others \u2013 ones that do require direct contact \u2013 should remain in The Hague.<\/p>\n

The goal is to cut costs, to do the same work with fewer people. The services will have to deliver the same results with 20% less staff. No lay-offs are required, as several temporary contracts have recently not been extended. Lilian Jillissen, director of SSC Education, Research & Student Affairs (OO&S), has been consulting ISS employees how to carry out the integration ever since the reorganisation was announced. Efficiency can be improved upon, she says, without reducing the quality of provided services. For example by using SSC systems that automate manual tasks. Employees will be placed in one team, learn from each other, and substitute for each other in case of absenteeism. Looking at it from this perspective, the budget cuts are necessitating a modernization that was a long time coming.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt goes without saying that everything will be customized to requirements,\u201d she states. \u201cAnd of course several colleagues\u00a0 will be available for student and staff questions every day. How exactly we will arrange this depends on what we will agree on.\u201d <\/p>\n

Notably, those three, four or five people at ISS is a high number for EUR standards. For Philosophy, assuming the same number of students, there would be one. For the 170 master students, fifty academics and around eighty PhD\u2019s of ISS, the reorganisation plan envisions sixty fulltime staff. Fifteen of the ISS staff members are directly involved in policy and student support \u2013 the tasks to be outsourced to SSC OO&S.<\/p>\n

There \u00eds no back office<\/b><\/p>\n

On paper it all makes sense. But in practice, on the part on outsourcing to SSC OO&S, it works differently. In the extended family that is the ISS, functions such as back office or front office are not clearly delineated. Specifically, sometimes several functions are carried out by one person. And due to the atmosphere and culture of close collaboration, a back office hardly exists \u2013 everyone is involved with everyone.<\/p>\n

Take Sharmini Bisessar. She studied Business Administration at an American university with 40 thousand students. At this point she has been working at ISS for fourteen years. As Programme Administrator, she is responsible for a group of master students: welcoming them, their schedules, study trips, organizing seminars, and so on. Her function is meant to be relocated to Rotterdam, at SSC OO&S. And if the functions were all that mattered that would be fine. But Bisessar does more than organizing. \u201cI am also their advisor and their friend.\u201d Bisessar refers to herself as a mother goose, \u201cfollowed around by ducklings.\u201d Students come to visit her all the time. She has lunch with her forty students once every month and organizes a meeting on the winter blues. \u201cWe have students who are diagnosed with cancer, we have pregnant women who are far from their home. We don\u2019t say \u2018that\u2019s not our problem\u2019, because it most definitely is our concern.\u201d<\/p>\n

No guarantees<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just a motherly concern\u201d, as Loes Keysers adds, \u201cIt\u2019s the core of ISS\u2019 effective, small-scale, international education and research.\u201d Keysers is Chairwoman of the Institute Council of the ISS. \u201cThe ISS work culture is a coproduction of knowledge where all those involved \u2013 students, academic staff and employees \u2013 work together from the beginning to the end of the study period. Therefore it does not merely demand specific administrative services for a specific unit price, but an attitude and ability of the supportive staff to be a coproducer, a part of the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is why the Institute Council is not in favour of the plans on a number of points \u2013 especially the outsourcing to SSC OO&S. But according to ISS dean Leo de Haan the ISS model will not have to be compromised. \u201cSound arrangements with the SSC OO&S are necessary, and we are in the process of making those.\u201d And that is where the problem lies. The council will not agree to a reorganisation as long as no guarantees are given that the ISS model is paramount and that this be reflected in the implementation. The current plan is not keeping up to this promise, according to several ISSers.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not how we work<\/b><\/p>\n

A major irritant is that many ISSers feel no one is listening to them. \u201cNo one is opposed to change and transformation,\u201d says South African master student Athi Majija. \u201cIn our home countries, many of us work for organizations that manage processes like these. But if you want to achieve something together with us, you will have to make sure we have a feeling of co-ownership of the process. We aren\u2019t clients, we are stakeholders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dean Leo de Haan acknowledges that the consultation of students, PhD\u2019s and staff could have been more attentive. \u201cI am currently playing catch-up,\u201d he reports. \u201cI have learned from this and, in the future, intend to interact much more explicitly and systematically with these important parts of the ISS community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The question is whether communicating will be enough to calm things down. The entire approach to the reorganisation has struck a nerve with several ISSers. \u201cThat\u2019s not how we work,\u201d says Indonesian PhD student Tamara Soukotta. \u201cThe reorganisation presupposes uniformity: ISS will have to adapt to the way things are done at the EUR. But we work on the basis of diversity.\u201d Yet another problem, the students deem the solutions purported by the reorganisati<\/p>\n

on plan typically neo-liberal. The larger the better because economies of scale increase efficiency. But that is not the only way to approach a problem, the students stress. Learning this is precisely one of the reasons they came to the ISS. \u201cI previously studied at the London School of Economics (LSE), but came to the ISS because you learn how to think in a broader spectrum here,\u201d says master student Mohammed Hadi. \u201cAltogether the process and the outcome is a rejection of what the ISS stands for.\u201d \u201cMost likely that wasn\u2019t the intention,\u201d Soukotta adds. \u201cIt is simply another way of looking at things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What is the ISS?<\/strong>\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t The ISS, \t\t\tsituated in The Hague, offers master programmes, courses, and does \t\t\tresearch in the field of development studies. Students are mainly \t\t\tprofessionals \u2013 average age is 28 \u2013 who are employed by the government \t\t\tover non-governmental organisations in developing countries. ISS \t\t\tfurthermore supports about 80 PhD\u2019s. The studies and PhD tracks are \t\t\tfinanced by scholarships and grants, provided by the organisation they \t\t\twork for, their family, the community, or via a personal loan.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\tThe ISS is part of the Erasmus University since 2009, characterized as a \t\t\tsui generis institution, unique in its sort.\u00a0 The EUR is fully \t\t\tresponsible for the management.<\/p><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n
What is going on?<\/strong>\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t The ISS \t\t\thas to cut costs. Its primary financier, the Ministry of Education, \t\t\talready reduced funding by 10 percent, will do so again on 1 January \t\t\t2014, and again in 2017.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t In June 2012, the dean of the ISS \u2013 \t\t\tcomparable to a faculty dean \u2013 announced a reorganisation in order to \t\t\taccount for the budget cuts. The Institute Council \u2013 comparable to a \t\t\tfaculty council \u2013 and the University Council formulated several \t\t\tconditions that would have to be met by the reorganisation.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t The \t\t\treorganisation was meant to be implemented in July 2013, but the plans \t\t\thave only now reached the University Council. The Institute Council \t\t\tjudged that the plans do not meet all conditions and criticized the \t\t\tprocess. The advice was positive in some parts, negative in others. ISS \t\t\tdean Leo de Haan is however proceeding to present the plans to the \t\t\tUniversity Council. De Haan has made some adjustments with regards to \t\t\tthe phases of the academic reorganisation and the teaching-and-learning \t\t\tenvironment, he informs via email. He also suggested adjustments \t\t\tconcerning the premises of integration with the SSC OO&S.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t \t\t\t The University Council will vote on the 25th of June.<\/p><\/span> \n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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