The VU’s editing service, which is provided by teachers with many years of experience in academic writing, checks both Dutch and English language papers and dissertations for spelling and grammar mistakes only. Think of dt-errors in Dutch, and pronouns errors. The editors don’t concern themselves with the content, structure or layout. They do however point out unclear writing and offer options for improvement. If necessary, students receive some general remarks concerning the style of their text. It’s up to them to do something with these remarks.

On being asked if TU/e offers a similar service, TU/e Language Center’s team manager Leonie Kasje responds that she “is a little surprised that the VU offers such a service. We deliberately do not offer this, because we consider writing papers and dissertations academic skills that our students should have mastered by the end of their studies.” The Language Center does however offer several workshops to help students further develop their academic writing skills. Kasje: “We have an online diagnostic test to asses the level of your English language skills, and we offer academic writing courses and workshops for writing a paper. Enough to help students write their own paper and dissertation.”

Meddle with contents

The service in Amsterdam is a response to the success of commercial companies that help with writing papers. According to Gea Dreschler, one of the initiators and professor of English linguistics at the VU, these companies not only correct grammar mistakes, they also meddle with the paper’s contents.

Dreschler tells university magazine Advalvas that “as teachers, we oppose this, because it then becomes unclear what was done by the student and what was done by such a company. She therefore believes that it is more “transparent” when the university offers its own editing service.

Nothing is for free. The costs of a perfect, error-free paper are 47.50 euros per hour. For that money, two editors correct the text. They don’t work on drafts, only on final versions. The editing service is part of the Academic language program’s writing center at the Humanities department.