Nikola Edelsztejn | The language level at the university is simply below standard
Columnist Nikola Edelsztejn is bothered by the number of grammar mistakes students make and by the overall level of the university. “Many tutorial groups are, in terms of atmosphere, interchangeable with a high school class.”
Having to write a monthly column is a highly appealing challenge, if only because sometimes there simply isn’t all that much of substance to write about. October was one of those months when not much happened on our campus, and becoming yet another person to contribute an opinion piece to the pre-election atmosphere didn’t seem like a great move either. So, laptop closed, notebook opened, and there I was, trying to come up with a topic—when the very image of a black pen between my fingers, a freshly opened notebook on the dinner table, and a pile of books became the inspiration for this column.
Paper
Writing by hand is one of my favorite activities precisely because it can be done anywhere, it bothers no one, and all your thoughts remain invisible. The floor of my bedroom is scattered with piles of paper filled with notes, fragments of stories, and observations that I will surely read again someday—please, wake me from that dream! That’s why I was pleasantly surprised during the last exam period when, for once, I was allowed to take an exam on paper. “As it should be”—pen firmly in hand, turning the pages with just a touch of drama.
Of course, there’s a certain romanticism to writing by hand: it’s a beautiful feeling to create something tangible. But beyond that beauty, the ink pen also serves as a filter for our thoughts. Much more than on a computer, we are able to correct our impulses, think more carefully about the sense and nonsense of a phrase, and—perhaps least pleasant but most important of all—we make more mistakes. Because we consume so much digital text, we can recognize whether a word on the screen is spelled correctly even without autocorrect; yet since we handwrite so little, we are less able to recognize errors on paper. For an academic program, I actually consider this fallibility a blessing, because the current language level is simply below standard.
This has struck me particularly at the Faculty of Law (though the same problem occurs in most “general” programs). It’s not uncommon for assignments to be graded insufficiently purely because of the number of language errors.
One problem is that faculties themselves have the freedom to design their own language proficiency tests, which are administered at the start of the first bachelor year. This is problematic, because the tests make no sense. At the Faculty of Law, students are expected to answer a series of reading comprehension questions—something that, as linguists have shown, bears no actual relation to language proficiency. A striking detail: this test, which can be passed by reading barely three out of a hundred lines of the text, is only passed by a slim majority.
Waltz
While the University of Amsterdam parades its high position in international rankings, the reality is that generative AI has become the best-rated professor, and many tutorial groups could, in terms of atmosphere, easily be mistaken for a high school classroom. When we look at more specialized programs, this trend is—thankfully—less pronounced, mainly because they include many third-year (minor) students from the start. But in large, general studies like law, the level and the expectations of it are engaged in a poorly choreographed waltz.
If the UvA truly wants to take inclusivity seriously, it’s time to adjust its standards. Inclusivity doesn’t mean that everyone automatically gets a place, only to breed mediocrity—it means that everyone has the opportunity to earn a place, thereby maintaining high standards. The cause of this problem lies partly with the university itself (its low admission requirements), but also with society at large (our “diplomacracy” and false meritocracy). We live under the illusion that completing an academic degree is the ultimate proof of competence and the gateway to desirable positions. In reality, the difference between vocational training and academic study at the large humanities and social science faculties is barely visible anymore, and the diploma—the entry ticket—has become a greater goal than the pursuit of knowledge.
And that brings me back to the pen: the ability to physically reorganize and contextualize knowledge fosters a deeper appreciation for both the beauty and the purpose of that knowledge. We process it better, we filter it more carefully, and we take more time for it; after all, we are constantly face to face with our own errors—or at least our fallibility. Even within the dependence on higher authorities, be they national or university administrations, we can still take our own responsibility to rise above the mire of mediocrity and live up to what we ultimately are: academics in the making.
Nikola Edelsztejn is in his first year of the BA in Italian Studies at the UvA.
