Designed by the University of Mons, Belgium

Benoit Vidouse, UNDP

Introduction

The information provided in this report is not the result of a series of enquiries into the Belgian University system. It is rather a structured narration of the experience lived by the author of this report when studying at a Belgian University.The report describes a system as it was functioning around 1985. Its content is therefore somewhat outdated. Nonetheless, the system is still in application 15 years later, with no major changes.

Being the result of a student’s personal experience, this report has the advantage of representing an analysis straight from the student’s point of view, but, by the same token, lacks depth in the description of the problems that might have emerged on the administrative side.

The Belgian University qualification system

The Belgian University qualification system

In Belgium, the most current university title is called a ‘licence’. It is obtained after four years of study and presentation of a ‘mémoire’. The ‘mémoire’, a form of short thesis, is quite a demanding exercise and is usually done during the fifth year.

During those five years, the student is normally fully dedicated to his studies and has no or little time to dedicate to professional activities or family. This is not true of the first year, where around 80% of the students devote most of their time to bacchanalian activities. It is true, however, that around 70% of the students fail that lethal first year.

The academic year starts in September and ends in August of the following year. Tests, written or oral, are passed in January and in June. Students usually complete more than 15 tests over two weeks. So, as a favour, some teachers schedule some of their tests around Easter in order to alleviate the June ordeal.

During the academic year, the students usually go to classes where they take notes. These notes, along with some recommended articles or textbook excerpts, are the basis for studying for the tests. Students with high attendance rates and good abilities to take notes are heavily sought after right before test period. This is less true in the Sciences sector, where textbooks represent a better part of the course content.

To compensate for the lack of reliable source of information, some teachers publish syllabuses. Syllabuses are essentially written by university departments and cover parts of the course contents. They are supposed to reflect the teacher’s point of view and, therefore, perfectly fit for preparing the test. They always consist of typewritten material on A4 sheets, copied and bounded by student services, sold at paper-cost price. Consequently, they are quite cheap, especially if compared to editor published textbooks. Regretfully enough, few university departments offer such support.

Background

The University of Mons-Hainaut is located in the southern part of Belgium. It includes: the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences; the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences; the Faculty of Sciences; the Faculty of Medicine-Pharmacy; and the International Interpreters’ School.

In 1984, members of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences decided to design a new system where students would have access to different types of reliable sources of information, and would not be compelled to rigid schedules, fast pacing, and tough test sessions. They wanted to open the access to University to those who did not have the time, money, or fast mind to start it. Here is what they did.

The system in a nutshell

Right from the beginning of the academic year, syllabuses covering exhaustively every course are made available to the students. Whenever possible, classes are organized in normal and short forms. The short form consists of question-answer sessions, with a total time of approximately 10 to 20 % of normal course length. The student is told in advance what chapter to review and is supposed to come to class with questions ready. So, students have three possible sources of information for understanding the course content: the syllabus, the short form classes, and the regular classes.

Attendance at classes is optional and tests can be taken at (almost) any time. It is up to the student to organize his or her own planning and system. Regulations authorize students to complete the whole programme of one full-time equivalent academic year in a minimum of six months through to a maximum of two years. Therefore, the four-year programme for a ‘licence’ can be completed in anything from two to eight years.

This system was structured around only four basic rules and the opening of access to learning was achieved as a result of four simple rules: For every course:

1.       At least 90% of any course content will be included in the related syllabus;

2.       Oral tests can be taken anytime, including before the beginning of the course or during the course (written tests on the full course will be proposed at least twice a year);

3.       The same test cannot be taken more than twice per year;

4.       Course credits are valid for no more than two academic years.

Expanation of the rules

Rule One: 90% of Content in Syllabus

All professors in charge of a course are required to offer a syllabus that will include over 90% of the content required for the final test. This guarantees the student that her or his knowledge and understanding of the syllabus will be enough to pass the test for that course, even without attending all, if any, of the organized classes.

Rule Two: Oral Tests Anytime, Written Tests Twice a Year

This is the logical complement to rule one: if the syllabus frees you from attending classes, therefore it makes sense to allow you to pass the test whenever you feel ready. For practical and economical purposes, the written tests are only offered a limited number of times, typically two to four times a year. The oral test requires only that the student make an appointment with the professor in charge. Once a date is agreed, however, there is no putting the test off: if the student does not show up on time, s/he misses it.

Rule Three: Two Chances Per Test Per Year

If a student takes a test and fails, s/he can pass it again within the same academic year. If s/he fails a second time for the same test, s/he will have to wait until the next academic year. This was established to avoid students taking tests ‘just to see’, and thus overloading professors with unwanted work.

Rule Four: Credit Valid for Two Years

As previously explained, besides the presentation of the mémoire, the Belgian licence implies four years of study. With the new system, those four ‘years’ can range from two to eight actual years.

The lower limit of two years was established to avoid unwanted deviation from the purpose of the Faculty: to educate, and not distribute titles. The upper limit is there because the University felt that, after more than two years within the same ‘year’ programme, knowledge needs to be updated and the tests students passed more than two years ago should therefore be taken again. More importantly, the Faculty did not want students lingering about for more than eight years.

Comments on the rules

Rule One: 90% of Content in Syllabus

This rule is the real cornerstone of the whole system. The other rules complement the first. In most Belgian universities, course content has to be found in textbooks, articles, and students’ notes. Quite often, it is not fully determined at the beginning of the year as it should be.

With this ruling, the Faculty compelled each department to finish entirely its homework on time: the course content had to be ready in a highly readable format right from the start of the academic year. That was probably hard on some old traditional habits, but had a quite positive effect on the overall quality of the content. Also, students could rely on one sole source of information instead of chasing anyone’s notes and photocopying unreliable or incomplete documents, as was almost always the case.

The syllabus being available at the beginning of the year, it is possible for students to examine them before the course starts. Thus, a student is able to evaluate the necessity to attend the classes: if most of the content is crystal clear, there is no need to go and listen to the teacher explaining something that can be understood much more rapidly by simply reading. When the content is not so clear, the student can always ask the teacher at what time the difficult points will be discussed and attend only those classes. If the course seems really difficult at first reading, then it the student can decide whether to attend the course or not, which is a much more educative attitude than feeling obliged to do so.

Also, it is possible for the experienced student to evaluate how long it will be necessary to study the syllabus and therefore start planning when to pass what. The whole process is actually highly formative for the student, in the sense that s/he constantly has to evaluate her or his workload against capacity and make decisions about planning. There are no more holidays or cram sessions, just material to be processed and time to be managed. What a preparation for professional life!

Rule Two: Oral Tests Anytime, Written Tests Twice a Year

Most of the time, appointments for oral test could be obtained within a week. Written tests were offered up to four times a year. Most departments were keen in their efforts to ease off the students’ struggle. Copies of previous tests were made available. For subjects such as statistics, where exercises are important, preparatory sessions and test simulations were organized.

So we were in a system where the student is free to choose what test to pass and when to pass it. S/he can decide upon his or her own rhythm, the order in which to pass the tests, and whether to attend classes or not. Then, why did only older student take full advantage of it? The sad truth is that most young students never took advantage of these features. They kept dragging their feet to the classes without checking the syllabus first. They kept finding themselves in hectic cram sessions in June and December, with 15 tests in two weeks. In the older group, almost 100% used and abused every advantage they could find.This peculiar aspect of things is discussed further.

Rule Three: Two Chances Per Test Per Year

Two chances per year were considered enough by all students. I have never heard any complaints about this rule

Rule Four: Credit Valid for Two Years

Although more constraining, this last rule was also not criticized. Indeed, it stopped some students, but those had already understood that something was wrong in their planning.

How it worked

The system had been designed to offer higher flexibility, and, in that regard, it was a complete success. Each student had the possibility to go at his or her own pace. Although never compulsory before, attendance to classes was now the result of an actual choice, since syllabuses were covering class content exhaustively.

Since the Faculty of Educational and Psychological Sciences had the good idea to widely publicize the characteristics of its new system throughout Belgium, the augmentation of registrations was tremendous. Within the first two years, registrations at the Faculty went from 350 to over 800. That included people coming from other cities, where universities offered the same course. This provides proof that the advantages offered by the new system transcended geographical factors (with the restriction that Belgium is smaller than the Kruger Park). The Faculty had also added a few niceties, like first year courses offered also after business hours and Saturday mornings in another city, fifty kilometres away.

Another novelty worth mentioning for its effectiveness is the administration staff contingent for freshmen: it was composed exclusively of former Faculty students. They were there to perform the usual registration tasks, but also to help students prepare for tests. They had copies of all former tests, and knew all the tricks of the trade. Just imagine a secretary explaining to you in the most competent way how to manage that teacher for that test. That was an everyday reality in that Faculty.

Finally, the university was keen to acknowledge previous relevant experience. For instance, those with educational degrees, like primary school teachers, received a waiver for a fixed series of courses or nurses would be exempt from some psychology courses, and so on. Even untagged professional experience was evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Usually, when such experience was accepted, the psychological impact was quite positive on some students, who thus could see their experience publicly recognized and valued.

As soon as the new system was put into place, the composition of the student population changed drastically. Instead of having over 95% of students about 18 years old coming straight out of high school, and about 5 % of people already engaged in professional life, the ratio changed to 70/30 at freshmen level. This means that older, experienced students were no longer a rarity, but an influential group.

These people were, for the most part, involved in the education sector and wanted, like everybody of that age, better jobs and better salaries. Their age ranged between 25 and 50 years old.

Very quickly, the two groups segregated. The younger students went for the normal length classes, did not open the syllabuses until just before the test, and put a maximum of tests in a minimum of time in the June’s session. In other words, they completely ignored the new system.

The older group was the opposite. They tried to turn the system even more to their advantage, for instance in trying to fold the oral test content toward their own field of expertise or use their regular professional time for practice hours (each student was supposed to participate to 100 hours of professional activities in the education or psychology field).

Also, class management was difficult at times for the teacher. The disparity of experience and maturity between the two groups caused quite a few problems. One can easily imagine what can happen when, for instance, during a course of methodology, some students have 20-year experience in the field while some are not even 20 years old. The professionally seasoned methodology expert might be there for a refreshment course or just complementary information. Usually, those people are keen to demonstrate their expertise, and do not hesitate to complement or challenge information given by the teacher. For most teachers, this was a most welcome happening, although there will be always teachers who are used to telling but not to being told.

As for most youngsters, they were usually eager to pass on as quickly as possible and avoid, at all costs, any controversy or additional ideas to memorize. Consequently, interventions from the older students were often unwelcome, sometimes even loudly.

The group of younger students usually referred to themselves as the ‘normal’ students. Also, during test times, the older group was more than once accused of ‘raising the standards’ and therefore making it more difficult for younger student.

As for the results on tests, it was better overall. Even though younger students did not use the main features of the new system, they were all studying from the new syllabuses. So few students are apt at taking notes or even organizing the photocopies of others’ notes that the fact of having a common, reliable, and exhaustive source of information helped everybody a lot.

The older group had other problems. Even with all the flexibility of schedule of the new system, some could not bear to work, have family, and study on top of that. Other people were there just to have company (university registration was almost free at that time in Belgium). Others were too meticulous, and would summarize a 300-pages syllabus in 200 sheets of small print. That was a good way to realize that, once you open your doors wider, all kind of unexpected people start entering.

On average, the older students had better rates of success and a slower pace. Although quite sociable, they were somewhat lonely after classes, since most of their age mates were going back home to family life and younger students were already in some bar downtown. Thus, the ‘university spirit’ among the elder never existed.

Conclusion

The beauty of the system lies in its simplicity. It took very little time for the Faculty of Educational and Psychological Sciences to define the rules and about one year to have the syllabuses and administration ready. Right from the start, they gathered students from all over the French-speaking part of Belgium. They more than doubled their student population. People who had abandoned the idea of getting a university degree were now flocking to the registration desk.

Financially speaking, the implications should have been light, although I am not aware of the extra costs implied by the sessions performed after business hours and the short form classes. The system wanted to open access to its door, and it succeeded in a rapid and economical way.

One aspect I still cannot explain is why such an efficient system kept itself restricted to one Faculty only. It never spread to the other Faculties of the university. The other Universities of the French-speaking part of Belgium tried similar structures quite rapidly. Administrative and organizational problems were blamed for this system not spreading.

This report is about what I lived as a student in Psycholinguistics in the Faculty of Educational and Psychological Sciences in Mons, between 1984 and 1986. What it describes is still true today in 2000. Older students get appointments with their teacher for oral test whenever they feel ready, although nowadays they do it by e-mail. Younger students still prefer the social craze of the June cram sessions.

Most of the time, policy makers impose their own view to others without appropriate prior consultation. The result is that, when new policies are applied, the people for whom these policies are intended try to get through them what they really wanted or needed, which is often quite different from what they are offered. The discrepancy between what is offered and what is taken is usually called ‘failure of the new system’, while it is mostly lack of communication and understanding from both sides.

In summary, then: Offer people what you want, they will pick up what they need.