It was a recently published pamphlet about Dutch universities. Having spent seven years studying at one, it now seemed appropriate I should read up about academia. So I bought the book.
The authors, professors Rens Bod, Remco Breuker and Ingrid Robeyns, are well known from the WOinActie campaign group, which has been calling for a while for better funding and improved working conditions in higher education. Indeed, the pamphlet pays a lot of attention to the high workload for university staff. It claims that teaching is only possible because they systematically work overtime. The authors make proposals for changes and call for a public debate. A different kind of university is both necessary and possible, they say. But that does require people to take action.
That is why the final section, ‘Who will do it?’, is perhaps the most interesting. The authors point to the government, university governors and silent, consenting academic staff, but also to students. Proposition 38: ‘Students and lecturers need to rise up together.’ Remco Breuker explained what they meant in the Dutch daily de Volkskrant (on 21 August). He says students don’t speak up nearly enough about their lecturers’ systematic overtime. They should take action en masse but they are not doing this. That is why he thinks students ‘don’t just have a financial debt (for their student loans) but also a moral debt to the people who make their education possible’.
Wow. I knew about the financial debt. But nobody had told me about that moral debt before now. To be honest, I do feel they have a point. The issue of lecturers’ excessive workload has often been raised over the past few years while I was studying. But I can’t remember us students ever talking about our role in this. This new pamphlet is a good occasion to get that discussion going. So I suggest you read that book by Bod, Breuker and Robeyns. And don’t wait until you’ve done your Master’s.
Vincent Oostvogels (25) is in the first year of a PhD on biodiversity recovery in dairy farming. His dream is to be able to keep a few cows of his own one day.
