Dick Meijer, member of the Campus Coalition and a Mathematics teacher, will take over as chairman from Geerten Schrama, who resigned for health reasons. Meijer has previously chaired the council from 1998 to 2002.
[The following has been excerpted from a longer article which appeared last week in Dutch in this newspaper]
Internationalization was one of the main themes at the opening of this academic year. What do you think we'll see of that this year?
`The executive board is off to a false start with internationalization: the high tuition fees are significantly reducing the inflow of students from outside the European Union. And the government is funding these students until at least 2008. Apart from that, however, together with UReka and CC, I am all for improving the possibilities and facilities for international exchanges. Faculties should work to increase the percentage of internships abroad and we should offer grants to excellent international students. Furthermore, a visit to an international conference and/or working in an international research group for a few months should become a part of any PhD student's development plan. But putting internationalization as absolute top priority is over the top and trendy. Last week a report showed that 95% of the freshman technological students failed the Math entry exam; I think an emergency plan for mathematical skills has an even higher priority for a knowledge center like the Netherlands than internationalization.'
Trans. Jeroen Latour
