The Vrije Universiteit shall be radically reformed. The manag
ement wants to merge several faculties and enter into an intensive collaboration with the University of Amsterdam. The University Library (UB) is to be joined together with the IT-department (UC-IT). 400 employees shall loose their jobs due to these cutbacks.
Many of the staff disagree with the plans. They fear an excavation of the academic standard of the organization. Anonymous employees have written as such in a pressing letter (Dutch) to the universitypaper ‘Ad Valvas’. The employees consider the managers at the VU too powerful and speak of ‘colonization by the management culture’.
Apart from that, Richard Oerlemans, director of UC-IT, is keen on the idea of a fusion between his department and the UB. He states (Dutch) in Ad Valvas that a new organization will mean an improvement in supporting the education. Because of the increase of digitalization of the library, a merge with the IT-services of the university becomes a logical next step.
Source (Dutch): Informatieprofessional
Source Image: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
