Number of appeals to UvA’s examination board has nearly tripled in six years
More and more UvA students are challenging decisions made by their degree programmes. Last year, the Examination Appeals Board (CBE), the body that rules on disputes concerning exams, admissions and study advice, received no fewer than 1,237 cases – almost three times as many as in 2019. Economics students, in particular, frequently lodged appeals.
An exam question that was wrongly marked as incorrect. A negative binding study advice (BSA) in which insufficient consideration was given to your personal or medical circumstances. Or perhaps an overly hasty decision to label your essay as plagiarism based solely on a high AI detector score. If you disagree with a decision made by your degree programme or examiner, you can appeal to the Examination Appeals Board (CBE) – the UvA’s “exam court”.
And this is happening increasingly often: last year, the board received no fewer than 1,237 cases, almost three times as many as in 2019. At the time, the CBE received just 470 appeals. This is according to the board’s annual report. A large proportion of the cases concern the way exams (317 appeals) or theses (59) were assessed. Decisions on binding study advice (164) and admission to master’s programmes (238) also frequently lead to appeals to the CBE.
Increase
According to a UvA spokesperson, the rise in the number of appeals is not an isolated development. “There also appears to be an increase in the number of requests submitted to examination boards, admissions committees and BSA committees. We do not yet know exactly what is causing the rise in administrative appeals. We will investigate this further, looking also at trends in the number of initial requests that precede an appeal.”
The university cites several possible explanations for the increase in the number of appeal cases, including the growth in the student population and changes in the information provided about the options for lodging an appeal. “The possible role of AI has not yet been investigated either. AI has made it easier to draft an appeal, but it remains to be seen whether, and to what extent, this has contributed to the increase,” the spokesperson says.
Number of appeal cases by faculty:
Economics students appeal most
Students at the Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB) were the most likely to appeal to the Examination Appeals Board: with 409 individual cases, almost one in three appeals came from this faculty. The Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences (FMG) and the Faculty of Humanities (FGw) also saw a high number of appeals. At the Faculty of Science (FNWI), by contrast, students were relatively unlikely to lodge an appeal.
Not all appeals ultimately result in a ruling by the CBE. Most cases are either settled (34 per cent) or withdrawn (30 per cent). In cases where the board does issue a ruling, the student wins in just under a quarter of them. Overall, only 3 per cent of all appeals result in a ruling in the student’s favour.
