The discussion about a numerus fixus for this study programme has been ongoing for a while, even before The Hague put internationalisation high up on the agenda and Dutch universities themselves took measures to curb the influx of international students.
Last September, 623 students (many of them from abroad) began at European Law School (ELS), a programme that looks at law from a comparative and European perspective. For years, the bachelor’s has been growing by an average of 10 per cent per year, the board pointed out during the faculty council’s latest meeting. For the coming years it is not unrealistic to expect influx figures of 650 or 700 students. Looking at it from a teaching capacity point of view, this is not feasible, they said.
In addition to having done a master’s of Law, lecturers must have an affinity with a comparative and European approach to law. They must also have a high quality of spoken English and be sufficiently fluent in Dutch “in order to function in a university setting”, stated a policy document. Considering the present shortage on the labour market this puts the faculty in a difficult position.
Earlier measures to curb the influx remained unsuccessful; matching questionnaires (questions that a student must answer and serve as a reflection on their choice to do a particular study programme) were incapable of separating the wheat from the chaff. With this capacity fixus, the law faculty is sounding the alarm. A maximum hasn’t been set yet, but although definite figures were not mentioned in the meeting, this will most likely be between 500 and 600. Selection will take place based on an unweighted lottery. That way everyone has a chance, said Sjoerd Claessens, vice dean of education. It also makes a major administrative difference. So, is this the solution? No other study programme at Maastricht University uses an unweighted lottery, so “we will have to go and look for experiences; what is the best way to do this?”
The risk of a numerus fixus is that prospective students automatically decide not to register, because they are afraid that they will not be admitted. This could result in the influx being lower than the fixed number, and that is disadvantageous for the financial position of a faculty. Nevertheless, the faculty is not worried about a lower influx due to the unique character and popularity of ELS.
ELS is one of the three bachelor’s programmes at the Maastricht law faculty. There are a (small) programme of Fiscal Law and Dutch Law. The latter has much fewer students than ELS, something that the faculty has felt uneasy about, because it sees the ratio between international and Dutch students becoming more and more unbalanced. This will have to change with a new Dutch bachelor’s programme that was announced by dean Jan Smits at the meeting. A lot is still unclear, but it will most likely be a study programme on the interface of Law and Political Sciences.