Ingunn (22) has waited almost ten months for UiO to process her case

— I just want answers, so that I can start planning my degree, says informatics and design student Ingunn Fløvig (22).

She had almost completed her second year of her bachelor’s degree in Computing and Software Systems at the University of Melbourne in Australia when the pandemic hit Europe in March. Like many other students, she packed up her things and went back to Norway.

Fløvig completed two out of four units in the spring semester in Australia and applied to the informatics programme at the University of Oslo (UiO) for the autumn. She sent an e-mail to UiO to see if she could transfer some of the units from University of Melbourne to the bachelor’s units in informatics at UiO. She has yet to hear from them.

Applied to transfer credits from Australia

It’s now been almost ten months since Fløvig applied for approval of units from the bachelor’s programme in Australia.

She’s started a new bachelor’s degree in Informatics and Design, a programme that resembles the bachelor’s degree she was halfway through in Australia, according to Fløvig.

— I had hoped to hear from them before the autumn of 2020, so that I wouldn’t have to take the courses I’ve already completed, the UiO student says.

She was told in August that her application had been assigned a caseworker. The caseworker apologised to Fløvig via e-mail in September about the long wait that was “due to the current Corona-situation”.

In September she received an answer from the caseworker telling her that they were waiting for a reply from the Institute of Informatics (Ifi).

Many of the subjects at Ifi have formal prerequisites and Fløvig has completed several of them in Australia. However, she may have to take them again in order to complete her degree.

— This is delaying my degree, and I have to take many courses from first and second year that I’ve already had, Fløvig says.

— Mentally demanding

— It’s mostly exhausting because it doesn’t provide me with any predictability. It makes it hard for me to plan my future studies, she says.

Fløvig has contacted the university, the caseworkers, and the institutes many times since she sent her application in March, without receiving any replies.

— It’s mentally demanding to not know what I’ll get approved and not approved. I just want an answer, she says.

In an e-mail to Ifi, Universitas asked about the general procedure for case processing and how it can happen that a student who has waited for over nine months, still hasn’t received an answer to her application.

Department manager at Ifi, Kristin Eliassen, says that the normal waiting time for cases to be processed is three months, but that certain cases take longer. She adds that Ifi has as a goal to reply to all approval cases within the semester they were submitted.

— Generally, I can say that there may have been a technical error so that the case has been inactive for some time, or that the processing has taken longer due to different causes, Eliassen writes.

– Difficult to comment on specific cases

Universitas has since sent an e-mail to the institute and asked them to comment specifically on Fløvig’s case. We have asked the following questions:

# Can you answer concretely to why Fløvig’s case has taken almost ten months?

# Is it okay that a technical error can cause a student to have to start over with a new bachelor’s degree when she was halfway through in Australia?

# If the different causes mentioned were not the reason for Fløvig’s long wait, then what could it have been?

# Do you know when Fløvig can expect to receive an answer?

— I think it’s difficult to comment on a specific case that I do not know the details of and that I don’t want to either. To me, it looks like the student got an answer to her case in September, but that the Ifi aspect of the reply was missing, Eliassen writes.

— Generally, I ask students who haven’t received replies to approval cases, to contact their faculty – in other cases, the institute is the closest point of contact. When the institute is made aware of old cases, we handle it as soon as possible – and we review our own routines to see if something could have been handled differently, she writes.

Fløvig says that she has contacted the institute and the caseworker several times, and that she last contacted them on the 19th of December, but without receiving any clarification. It wasn’t until Wednesday, after Universitas had contacted Ifi, that Fløvig was told she would receive an answer soon. .

Half a year late

The leader of the Student Parliament at UiO, Runa Fiske, tells Universitas that she has not heard of similar cases before.

— UiO’s own guidelines state that the case processing should take one month, and if academic assessment is needed, it can take up to four months. In this case, the student has waited for six months longer than expected, she says.

Fiske adds that it has been a different year for the university. She thinks UiO has faced many new challenges due to the pandemic.

— That she has had to wait for so long could be a result of corona, but she should have received an answer a long time ago anyways, Runa Fiske, the leader of the Student Parliament, says.

She adds that it is possible to receive help and support, and encourages everyone to contact an elected representative, the Ombud for Students, or the “Speak up” system that UiO offers.