Broke because of corona? Pay your tuition in May
Student accounts also won’t be blocked if they can’t pay Thursday’s instalment because of coronavirus consequences, says Sander van den Bos, head of student information and administration.
‘We understand that a lot of student jobs have dissipated, and we want to let them know that we haven’t forgotten them’.
New arrangements
Students will receive an email if the collection fails on Thursday to tell them about the new arrangement. If they still have trouble making the payment in May, the university will make arrangements based on the individual student’s situation.
Though if a large group of students has similar troubles, they can design a more generic approach. ‘So it’s important that students still email us at study@rug.nl, either before or after the collection, so that we know the scope of the problem’, says Van den Bos.
The coronavirus measures may cause other problems outside of a student’s influence, such as delays or the cancellation of courses that can’t be offered online. In this case the university considers using the Graduation Fund to compensate for financial repercussions.
No reimbursement of tuition
So far the university does not think the change to online education is cause for reimbursing part of the tuition. ‘We’re trying to form the classes as well as possible, though in a different shape than before’, says UG spokesperson Jorien Bakker.
It is a point of national concern and might result in a national arrangement, as in the case of the BSA.
For both the BSA and the payments, students have to provide a clear link to consequences of the coronavirus, ‘but these can be very diverse’, says Bakker.
Continuation of education
With these measures the university wants to make sure that students experience as few consequences as possible from the coronavirus. ‘It’s important that everyone can continue to take part in education’, says Bakker.
‘We don’t have an answer for everything yet, but we’re learning day by day’, says Bakker, ‘and we’re working very hard to take some of the insecurity away from the students.’