Psychology students demonstrated at ULB for better study conditions

Belgium

About 200 students from the Faculty of Psychological Sciences and Education demonstrated at 10 am on Wednesday at the Solbosch campus of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

They called on Jean-Claude Marcourt, the Minister of Higher Education in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, to guarantee the accessibility and quality of the training. Students testified to their difficulties in studying. Banners displayed messages of the type "1 student = 1 place".

The Federation of Francophone Students (FEF) and the Belgian Federation of Psychologists (FBP) denounce the critical situation experienced by Master's students in psychology in French-speaking universities, namely a shortage of supervisors and promoters, overcrowded audiences or even students failed to register certain courses.

The funding currently granted to the institutions does not make it possible to absorb, under acceptable conditions, the significant increase in the number of students enrolled in a Master's degree in psychology at the four French-speaking universities. The mobilized students plead for a budget of support for the faculties of psychology to be negotiated during the next vote of the 2019 budget in the parliament of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation.

Belgian students say they are in solidarity with students of French nationality. "We want to get by," said Maxime Michiels, president of the FEF. "To go back to the issue of the minister's quota, it's not our request, we want an additional envelope to urgently resolve the situation, before when it was done, we limited the number of practitioners. as in medicine and then there were almost only French people, but this is no longer the case today, there is no shortage of psychologists. "