By Lisa Jesudas and Kama Wojtuszko
All throughout the summer holidays of this past year, the AUC Class of 2023 Whatsapp group chat bustled with discussion over issues with obtaining their vital statements of graduation and AUC diplomas. For Mirthe van Veen, the stress was enough to consider taking legal action against AUC as she still had not received her statement two days before the deadline: “At this point, if AUC is not going to listen to my mad emails, I was just going to threaten to sue them,” she says.
Van Veen was proactive in requesting the Service Desk to punctually review her Academic Record Check since May of 2023. This would allow the Board of Examiners (BoE) to approve and send the required documents before 31 August — a common hard deadline among numerous Master’s programmes in the Netherlands to submit the statement of graduation. With two days left before the Master’s enrollment deadline, Van Veen vividly recalls the anxiety caused by the lack of issuance of her graduation statement. She sent an email to the Service Desk saying that she was prepared to take legal action if necessary. Two hours later, she received the approval of her statement of graduation.
AUC Class of 2023 graduate Emre Erciyes was similarly distressed that day — 29 August — since he too had a looming enrollment deadline for an UvA Master’s programme and still lacked crucial documents. “Unless I did something myself, I wasn’t going to get my proof of graduation,” Erciyes says. Only after emailing his AUC tutor, who swiftly responded with solutions, did Erciyes manage to obtain his statement of graduation.
Meanwhile, AUC Class of 2023 graduate Sapna Hassan had a far more relaxed experience because she received her statement of graduation several weeks earlier on 31 July. Ironically, Hassan had no urgent need for the statement of graduation, as she was not pursuing a Master’s program like Erciyes and van Veen. “I didn’t have any problems whatsoever, yet I was hearing my friends complain about not getting their statement,” Hassan says. “What kind of system is this?”
Janey Niemeijer*, the former Head of AUC Admissions & Registrar, says that at least five students did not receive their proof of graduation on time before their deadlines in the 2023 June batch of graduates. For some students, Niemeijer had to become involved directly, and personally intervene in order to make sure the graduating students received their documents on time.
At AUC, a student can obtain three different documents related to graduation: an expected graduation statement, a proof of graduation or a statement of graduation, and a diploma. The expected graduation statement is a non-binding document that can be requested at any point of one’s studies at AUC. Niemeijer explains that receiving the proof of graduation or diploma is a more complicated process.
The reason for that is the flexibility of the programme and the freedom of course choices at AUC. Since each student has a unique combination of courses, the process cannot be automated as it is, for instance, the case for most UvA students. For AUC students, the consequence of this is that they need to request the two documents – proof of graduation and diploma – separately. Niemeijer notices that the two are often confused, not only by students, but by tutors as well. The first one can be requested through the Registrar once a student is certain that they will be able to graduate, and only when approved by the BoE can the Registrar begin the process of issuing the statement of graduation.
The process of obtaining the diploma is more lengthy, as it requires additional steps such as official printing and the involvement of other UvA departments., Thus, the official deadline for AUC to complete issuing all diplomas is 1 October. All information needs to be entered manually for each student, and later carefully checked by the BoE. However, Niemeijer notes that the graduation statement is sufficient for Dutch universities.
There are numerous factors relying on a prompt issuance of the statement of graduation. For Erciyes, the bureaucratic hassle was not over once he secured his statement of graduation. The UvA Master’s enrollment process also required Erciyes to submit a certified transcript, which AUC did not provide alongside the graduation statement as he had requested. In the end, the certified transcript was sent one day before Erciyes’ deadline.
In van Veen’s case, her Master’s programme required an eight-week preparatory course before the fall semester began. Without the statement of graduation and a completed enrollment, van Veen was not permitted access to this course’s Canvas page and the necessary study material for a graded final exam. “I had to basically fit eight weeks of course content into two days to even get into the first course of my Master’s after enrolling,” she says.
“I stood crying at my admissions office for hours”
– Mirthe van veen
Moreover, van Veen lives in student housing and must submit a document that proves her enrollment at a university by 1 September to continue her tenancy. She feared losing her housing, since the enrollment was not yet completed by the time the deadline approached. The same applied to van Veen’s eligibility for student finance, which she emphasised needing in September via the Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs (DUO) — a government agency of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (OCW).
Ultimately, AUC managed to provide all the documents van Veen needed to complete her Master’s enrollment, remain in student housing, and receive DUO student finance. Van Veen decided that the amount of effort and time required in taking legal action at this point was not worth it. Instead, she plans to discuss her issues with the Student Council and the BoE, in hopes of enacting change surrounding the graduation process.
The Student Council has yet to be contacted by van Veen or other alumni facing similar issues. Cat Gelderloos, the Student Council co-chair, encourages “affected students to reach out to us, share their experiences, and voice their concerns.” The Student Council has communicated this issue with the Director of Education, the BoE and the Registrar.
Besides the Student Council, which can offer support to alumni facing issues obtaining their graduation statements or diplomas, the AUC Alumni Association (AUCAA) is another point of contact that is available. Nevertheless, the Student Council advises students to contact the Registrar or the BoE first and foremost to solve any concerns related to graduation documents.
Erciyes and van Veen both emphasise that the entire process took a toll on their mental health. As a last resort for van Veen, who at the time believed she would not get her statement on time, pleaded her case to the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) of Erasmus University: “I stood crying at my admissions office for hours,” she says. Upon hearing her explanation that AUC is struggling to provide statements of graduation in a timely manner, RSM could offer no additional help to van Veen. “They [RSM] told me that everyone else is managing in the whole country; therefore, we expect your university to do the same,” van Veen says. She shares that this was a low moment for her.
“The fact that they didn’t do more and that it was up to us to communicate with the right people to get the proof of graduation is embarrassing”
Emre Erciyes, 2023 auc graduate
Erciyes notes how he believed that the circumstances would have been managed, despite all the stress. However, he mentions that this privilege was because “my situation was easier since I was dealing with UvA.” Like van Veen and Hassan, Erciyes knew of AUC graduates that urgently needed documents for immigration purposes and for universities outside of the Netherlands with differing admissions processes. Many graduates were also navigating these uncertainties whilst spending their holidays outside of the Netherlands.
All three alumni agreed that inefficient communication was a major fault in the overall process. In general, students received automated replies, which frustrated them. For Erciyes and van Veen, Service Desk eventually stopped responding to their emails altogether. In Hassan’s case, she also experienced inconsistencies when communicating with AUC about picking up her diploma for immigration reasons. “The fact that they [AUC] didn’t do more and that it was up to us to communicate with the right people to get the proof of graduation is embarrassing,” Erciyes says.
Niemeijer acknowledges these communication issues and problems with the overall process. While she sympathises with students’ cause for alarm in escalated situations, the workload for the Admissions and Registrar team is daunting. “We have been putting ourselves in a very difficult situation where we have such a short period of time to do so much manual labour,” Niemeijer says.
Since the Registrar office works on tight deadlines, one of AUC’s attempts to make the process more efficient was the introduction of a tracker system that students could access to stay updated on the progress of obtaining their documents in April 2022. The tracker malfunctioned for Erciyes and van Veen, but Hassan’s tracker worked as intended. Niemeijer acknowledges that there is room for improvement regarding the tracker system: “Let’s just say it’s glitchy and not ideal,” she says. The tracker is still not fixed, but Niemeijer says a solution is underway.
Another streamlining feature for the Class of 2023 graduates was the implementation of a priority list for students who needed to receive their documents faster. Erciyes and van Veen requested to be added to this priority list early on, but this feature offered them little assistance. In 2023, 100 out of 236 graduating students ended up on the priority list. Eventually, the priority list “didn’t really help either,” Niemeijer reflects.
“What the students don’t see and what I do see is that I have an extremely dedicated team right here”
janey niemeijer, former head of auc admissions and registrar
Niemeijer explains that, at the moment, the Management Team (MT) is striving towards implementing a system that allows AUC students to request a statement of graduation themselves. This way, the document can be issued automatically. “I’m very much a proposer of automation,” she says. However, Niemeijer also notes that such a system would only work if it can digitally recognise each student’s unique AUC curriculum and this does not exist yet.
AUC students and staff alike appear to be aware that this process has been problematic for several years. “We [AUC students] thought that by this year they [AUC] would have fixed it,” Erciyes says. Niemeijer shares that this topic continually arises in discussions among the MT and proposals for improvement across all relevant bureaucratic factors have been suggested. However, Niemeijer believes that “it’s just difficult to solve the problem without throwing lots of money at it, to put it bluntly.”
Niemeijer notices that students are sometimes unaware of the numerous factors behind-the-scenes and among the professional staff. “What the students don’t see and what I do see is that I have an extremely dedicated team right here,” she says, continuing, “they work tirelessly to really make it work for the student.” Hence, Niemeijer emphasises the need to move away from an ‘us-against-them’ mentality in terms of AUC students and professional staff.
*Editor’s note: As of 31 October 2023, Janey Niemeijer is no longer the Head of AUC’s Admissions and Registrar. She was in the process of transitioning out of her position at the time of interviewing.
The Herring 