Headlines

This has been a tense week for the nearly thirty studentpianists who are participating in the qualifying rounds of theUtrecht University student piano competition. As in the past eightyears, the competition is being organized by the Parnassos CulturalCenter. The finals will be held at the Vredenburg Music Center on27 October, when the three finalists will be accompanied by theUtrecht Student Orchestra. Then they will have a choice of fourcomposers: Beethoven, Mozart, Schumann or Shostakovich. Studentsfrom all over the world are participating this year, includingcandidates from Canada, Denmark, Great Britain, Indonesia, Mexico,Moldavia, Russia, the United States and Zimbabwe.

Public bicycles.

If you feel sick about having yet another bike stolen, analternative is in sight. The municipality, which is keen onpromoting Utrecht as a bicycle-friendly city, has come up with theidea of public bicycles. The bicycle park licensee UB2000 wants tocommit a hundred bikes to start with. The daily charge for hiring abike will be five guilders.

Course credits

The Minister of Education, Loek Hermans, wants to have theuniversities financed in future through the credits obtained bytheir students. At the moment the universities still receive acertain amount of money for each degree awarded. If a studentchanges his or her courses or drops out, the university loses themoney earmarked for the potential degree. The minister is in favorof the change because the Dutch system of higher education is aboutto switch over to a system of Master's and Bachelor's degrees.Under the new system many students will be expected to followMaster's programs at universities different from the ones wherethey received their Bachelor's degrees. The Association of DutchUniversities is not very happy with the new form of financing. Itforesees an "enormous amount of red tape" to administer thesystem.