This speech by Marcello Seri was meant to be addressed during the discussion of the Smart Academic Year on 11 December. Due to other pressing matters, the point has been removed from the agenda and the speech will be sent in writing for information to the Board of the University, in preparation for the new discussion in February.

A few weeks ago, I read an article that argued, quite persuasively, that as organizations grow, frustration with management is inevitable. This is largely a function of scale: leaders lose direct access to individual concerns, feedback becomes fragmented and overwhelming, and the sheer volume of input makes meaningful processing impossible. The result is a structural disconnect: leaders can’t please everyone and they can’t always explain their reasoning, and misunderstandings multiply, leading to frustration (on both sides).

Yet, accepting this reality allows us to mitigate it. Transparent processes for delegating, filtering, and contextualizing feedback, addressing it in a tight loop, can reduce friction, build trust, and foster shared ownership of problems and solutions.

This resonated with my recent experience. It made me think about the difficult job our board faces, especially in the current turmoil, and the equally difficult job of this council, mediating between the feelings of our constituencies and the compromises needed to run a large organization. It also made me worry about the coming harmonization.

The smarter academic year should be a case of low-hanging fruit for this process. Everyone agrees: the Dutch academic year is too intense for our students, who face a constant flow of information, packed schedules, and almost no breaks throughout the year. The same is true for lecturers, who often struggle to find time for their research and the multitude of administrative and managerial tasks on their plates. A plan to relieve this stress and create space for rest and reflection is more than welcome.

Yet something has gone sideways in its process. In recent months, we’ve been approached repeatedly (by students and staff, including education and program directors from multiple faculties) worried about rumors, upset that their concerns were ignored, and frustrated by a process in which they felt uninformed and unheard. At the same time, we keep reading UKrant articles and now a report claiming nearly unanimous support for the changes.

Somewhere along the way, legitimate, well-founded worries were lost, perhaps in the effort to put a positive spin on the situation. I argue that these nuances belong at the heart of the discussion, and deserve a place in both the report and the final decision.

Some of these concerns appeared in recent gevoelens from faculty councils. It appears that a small number of programs have a genuine need for a different setup, whether for field trips integral to the student experience, or for shared labs with unique scheduling demands. We’ve heard similar concerns from both staff at FSE and UMCG.

While part of the goal of the smart academic year is to standardize the schedule, we must ask: is it worth damaging established, successful programs, praised at the national level, for the sake of uniformity? A sensible plan should allow faculty councils some leeway to accommodate specific programs that can demonstrate clear benefits and needs for alternative solutions. We shouldn’t have to rely on gevoelens to learn about these issues; they should have been part of the project report itself.

Similarly, we’ve heard from various programs in the midst of curriculum redesign, now facing challenges in phasing out old courses, introducing new ones, and integrating these changes with the new harmonization requirements. Nothing is impossible, but it all adds to an already heavy burden on lecturers and brings with it a question on the quality of education, stretched thin by all this extra work. Given the circumstances, it would have been useful to explicitly assess whether some flexibility for these situations could have been built into the plan and, if not, to have made clear why this is the case in the report itself.

This is not to say no one supports the plan: many do and look forward to it. But important concerns seem to have been swept under the carpet without the thought or clarification they deserve.

Perhaps my biggest worry is that the current plan does not appear to address the promised reduction in workload or the necessary breaks. We have read about alternative options for this in some of the trials, like resits in the middle of blocks, allowing a true free break week, and receiving positive feedback from both participating students and staff. Yet these seem to have been dismissed without explanation. And if this is not the case, if there are clear reasons why these were not suitable options, it would have been good to know it as part of the report. Somehow these points seem to have gotten stuck at some level, perhaps due to the many layers of indirection between the workforce and the project management.

I believe all the work has been done in good faith, with the best interests of our university at heart. But from the point of view of the staff, many of us perceived a serious lack of transparency in the process. This contributed to the worries and frustration over the past months, leaving a bitter taste for those who care deeply about their programs and students, who invested (and are still investing) time and effort in the trials, and who now feel ignored, having wasted their time. Will they step up the next time we need to implement important changes?

If we struggle to have a transparent process, and to keep the communication channels and the feedback loop open, for a change as simple and as broadly supported as this, how can we hope to succeed with the larger harmonization plans we so desperately need?

We are still in time to correct the course, both in terms of process and communication, especially as we look ahead to future challenges. We must ensure that changes maintain a degree of flexibility when there are good reasons for it, and that we listen to staff concerns, reflecting on them and providing clear (and visible) answers. And for the smart academic year, we should also do our best to create the space for students and for staff to recharge between blocks.

With that, I apologize for adding to an already long and complex meeting, and thank you for your patience.