As first-year Creative Business students at BUas, we want to raise awareness about the current academic planning and how it affects us, especially the international students in our class.

Our program is international, meaning many of us travel back home during holidays. However, the current schedule makes this really difficult and expensive. For example, around the upcoming Christmas break, we have two weeks off, then one week with only one or two classes that we’re required to attend, and then another three weeks off.

This kind of planning forces international students to either pay for two separate trips home or stay in the Netherlands for weeks without any real study activities. It feels like such a waste of time, money, and energy, time we could be spending learning, working on projects, or actually enjoying our holidays properly.

We’re asking BUas to reconsider the schedule and give us the option to follow the mandatory session online, in this way everyone will be able to follow the classes from wherever and because of this stay at home for a longer period of time. We love studying here, but we believe the planning could be improved to make life easier and fairer for everyone in our international program.