In an email sent to about 300 students it potentially concerns, rector Thom Palstra calls it a ‘partial waiver’ for final year non-EEA students that would otherwise expect to graduate before 1 September 2020. If that’s not possible because of the corona crisis, they are given a maximum of five months – until 1 Februari 2021 – to finish their degree, but for a significantly lower tuition fee.
In this case, non-EEA students will only have to pay the statutory tuition fee (€2,143 for a full study year in 2020-2021), instead of the usual significantly higher institutional tuition fee. This institutional year normally ranges from €9.125 per year for several bachelor programmes to €16,000 per year for an engineering master’s. The UT will also pay extra costs for a visa.
Asking for compensation
This compensation only applies to non-EEA students in the final year of their bachelor’s or master’s who are not able to finish their study this academic year because of the crisis – which is potentially an eligible group of about 300 students. They are supposed to contact their respective study advisor for more information.
Other non-EEA students are also asking for some form of financial compensation. A few months ago, CreaTe student Gleb Podorozhnyy started a petition, asking to lower the tuition fee for all non-EEA students. The petition now has 900 signatures. In the meantime, the UT started offering some leniency for other non-EEA students who suffer from a study delay because of the crisis situation, but that’s aimed at their residence permit, not a financial compensation.
