2 april 2026
Binding study advice (BSA) does not help students graduate more often or more quickly. In fact, the introduction of BSA leads to a small decrease in the likelihood of students obtaining a university degree. This is the conclusion of research by economist Sander de Vries.
Because the effectiveness of binding study advice had hardly been examined, economist Sander de Vries decided to investigate it in more detail. Using microdata from Statistics Netherlands (CBS), he studied the effects of the introduction of BSA across 351 university degree programmes, covering 712,384 bachelor’s students who started university between 1994 and 2014. His analysis considered short-term effects, such as dropout and enrolment, as well as long-term effects such as graduation rates and study duration. This makes it the largest study to date on the effectiveness of BSA.
For more information please read full article in ESB
For more media coverage see NOS stories, NRC, VU