Restriction on Excellence Scholarships

Tilburg University might sharpen the demands for receiving an Excellence Scholarship (ES). Financially, it’s not possible to keep the scholarship in its current form. On Friday, the university council will decide about the plans.

At the moment, the costs of the ES are uncontrollable, and some aspects of the scholarship are being adapted. The criteria, the financial preconditions and the method will change. A student who applies for an ES has to manage to achieve his bachelor in three years, get a 8,5 out of 10 on average and use his scholarship for a TiU research master or a master abroad. The ES contains 3500 euros and only 15 will be distributed, as long as can be permitted.

In practice, a lot less than fiftheen scholarships are used, Liesbeth Leijssen said, during the meeting with the university council’s executives. Still, the money has ran out and the regulation is executed. Leijssen: “The open-end regulation (in which it is unpredictable how many students will use it, ed.) has made the costs uncontrollable and applying the first money stream is illegal. We want to make up for the shortages.” Studentservices wants to do that as soon as possible, because recent first year students don’t have any expectations of the system yet. According to Leijssen, this is legally possible.

The people from the Onafhankelijken said that the strategic plan includes a clause about excellence. The university wants to reward excellence, so it’s weird that there’s no proper system for that. Student faction SAM asked how many students are affected by this. “We want to excel at this university, but chances are that excellence is not rewarded right now.” Student faction Front pointed out that during the discussion about top sport policy last summer nobody spoke about a shortage. “Did anybody expect this to happen back then?”

For now, the two student factions said that they withhold their votes for now. The matter will be discussed again on Friday.