Abolition of honours programme prompts strong opposition

This op-ed was written by University Council member Leonie Gerth (Lijst Vuur) with the support of the entire student delegation and several members of the staff delegation. The opinions and views expressed here are their own and do not necessarily represent DUB's views.

The student delegation of the University Council, do not support the disbanding of the faculty honours programmes for various reasons. Firstly, we believe students deserve the chance to excel and challenge themselves in their education. This chance is completely taken away for students starting in 2025-2026 and in the years to come. Secondly, we are not convinced that this disbanding will actually save money, while the negative effect on students’ educational opportunities is guaranteed. Lastly, the decision-making process of disbanding honours is flawed and is not being communicated properly to faculty councils and to the university community. 

We are of the opinion that if the executive board wants to disband faculty honours programmes, time has to be taken beforehand to investigate the effects of this decision and what possible next steps are regarding incorporating honours in regular education and providing new opportunities for students.  

Race is not run yet
At this time, the university council is talking about the closing and opening times of buildings and the disbanding of the faculty honours programmes. The executive board, however, has already publicly included these two topics in their “predetermined strategies to cut costs”. This suggests that the talks we are having are unimportant and will not change anything. This might be true for the closing and opening times of buildings, which is a nota for information and can be done even if the university council would not agree with this. However, the nota about the disbanding of the faculty honours programmes is a different story altogether. 

It is only next Monday that the university council will officially vote on whether the faculties will still be obligated to have an honours programme or not. Even after the university council has decided on this, the faculty boards still have to obtain advice from their participation bodies at the programme level and the positive vote of the faculty council. Anyone that implies that the university council's decision next Monday decides the fate of our faculty honours programmes would do well to remember that these steps must also be taken. This fact was also emphasized by our Rector Magnificus, Henk Kummeling, in the university council meeting last Monday February 10.  

Challenges
In this meeting, we asked how students who crave a challenge or might want to enhance their resume to compete in a selective labour force would be able to do this without honours, since this is a large concern of our constituency. 

The rector claims that there are plenty of challenging courses, such as community engaged learning or interdisciplinary research, that could provide a challenge. These courses, however, do nothing to enhance your diploma or resume, which might make UU-students less able to compete against students from other universities that are keeping their honours programmes. 

Additionally, he admitted that the increase in such courses would not start September 2025, which would be the first year without faculty honours programmes. We have stated that this leaves students starting 2025-2026 with fewer opportunities to excel, but this, to him, was a necessary cost. Apparently, the executive board is very willing to save money on your education, without providing any alternatives.  

Cutting costst, how so?
It also became excruciatingly clear that the rector had no idea what the disbanding of honours would yield in terms of money. To us, that makes the disbanding of honours as a budget cutting strategy seem more like a blind gamble. There is no mention of any plans to cut or save money on the university honours programmes and the rector even said the university honours programme might be expanded if students would show increased interest in the programmes, which will of course mean that the expenses will increase instead of cutting costs.  

It is also worth noting that the executive board and the faculty boards, specifically the vice-deans, have been asking for the disbanding of faculty honours programmes since the summer, even before we knew the full effect of the budget cuts to come. 

In our opinion, the strong favour of the executive and faculty boards is clouding their judgement on the effects of disbanding honours. In this entire process, the board has not included the Honours College, honours teachers and honours students in their discussions about the disbanding of faculty honours. The news eventually got out in October, to both Honours College, teachers and students, who were taken completely by surprise. Afterwards, the executive board claimed to have talked to the Honours College in an apparent attempt to pretend that they had done more than talk amongst themselves about this decision that we think affects students very directly.  

Should you be interested to know how the conversation with the university administration on the elimination of honours and the communication around this issue is going, , we encourage you to attend the meeting on February 17th 14:00 – 16:00 in the Matthias-Jorissenzaal in the Bestuursgebouw at Utrecht Science Park. Here the university council will officially vote on if the faculties remain obligated to have a faculty honours programme or not.