“There’s a nice story on Hint, but the actual implementation is not in keeping with it,” said student member Esmée Paling during the sgmr meeting early this week. “If you request information by email, it takes a long time before you get a response.” Sgmr chairman Brian van der Sluijs also had a negative experience when he and his lecturer applied for a grant intended for a class study trip. “From the lecturer, I learned that no response had come, which meant that it would – apparently – not be awarded.”

Understaffed due to illness
In a statement, Enny Kraaijveld from the CoIA says that the CoIA Exchange Team was understaffed for a year and a half due to illness. “It is possible that the response time was too long during that period, indeed. By now, the team is running at full strength, and it is geared to providing students, lecturers, and study programmes with the right information as quickly and accurately as possible.” Some processes, however, take quite some time. Kraaijveld: “If a student wants to pursue part of his studies abroad, the acceptance of such a student by the foreign university might take a few weeks. This is something that we communicate clearly.”
The CoIA is managed from the RBS (Rotterdam Business school), because that is the international school of the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences. Kraaijveld: “However, the focus lies on the entire university. Every separate institue has its own internationalisation coordinator who should be able to inform students and refer them to CoIA. The CoIA asked these coordinators to devote additional attention to visibility and accessibility within their schools. CoIA is available by telephone throughout the day and holds daily office hours during which students can ask their questions at the counter.”

Having a say in improvements
However, Kraaijveld takes the sgmr’s criticism regarding the relatively unknown office to heart. “We will give every effort to change this, and we would like to invite the sgmr students to examine with us how we can improve our name and visibility.” This invitation also applies to the other points of criticism that the students have, says Kraaijveld.
One of the points the sgmr brought up during the meeting this week was the amount of the Explorer scholarship. Students are eligible for this scholarship, provided by the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, if they are going to take up a course of study outside the European Union for a certain period (if they do so within the EU, they are eligible for an Erasmus scholarship subsidised by the European Commission). The Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences makes 75,000 euros available every year. Because the total amount is divided among all applicants seeking an Explorer scholarship, the individual amount differs per year. “Unfair,” says Central Representative Board member Joost Bakker. “We call for a fixed amount.”

Upgrading the basic amount
Sanderman believed it was a valid point, but was not able to promise that something could be done about it early this week. “However, the CoIA is serious about examining it. Perhaps we should consider a fixed basic amount that we can upgrade depending on the number of applicants?”
According to Kraaijveld, the differences are not that considerable. The student received 300 euros per trip in 2013 and 250 euros in 2014 and 2015. When investigating the matter, she also explicitly wants to examine whether more scholarships can be made available. The Holland Scholarship – grants that are partly paid by the national government and partly by the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences – is new, for example. An amount of 1,250 euros per student is made available for a total of four motivated and talented students who want to go abroad for six months this year.

Jos van Nierop