After weeks of negotiations, the Netherlands’ coalition government has announced a reduction to the planned education cuts from €2 billion to €1.2bn over the next four years.
The €748m reversal was decided by the coalition government led by the far-right Party for Freedom and opposition parties on December 12, securing a Senate majority to pass the education budget 2025 next week.
“It’s still not our budget, but we’ve made a bad budget less bad,” said Henri Botenbal, leader of the opposition CDA party following the vote.
Originally, the government proposed an education budget cut of €2bn over four years, with a notable reduction in research funding and the reintroduction of a €3,o00 “long-term study fine” for students who delay the completion of their studies by more than a year.
While the widely criticised study fine will no longer be implemented, a coalition of the country’s leading higher educational organisations have said that they have “major concerns” about the impact on higher education and scientific research, 90% of which remain for science.
Proposed cuts of €293m to international student funding now stand at €168m, with the government spending less money subsiding EU students’ tuition fees.
“The scenario for the coming years is that we have undermined our innovative capacity and have squandered our reputation abroad,” said Marileen Dogterom, president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).
“We have lowered the quality of education for our Dutch students, have lost unique study programs for good and we can no longer find sufficient talent in the Netherlands to help think about solutions to the problems that will come our way,” she added.
We have undermined our innovative capacity and have squandered our reputation abroad
Marileen Dogterom, KNAW
Contrary to the agreement among European countries to invest 3% of their GDP in research and innovation, the Dutch investment will amount to 2.3% and there will be €217m less for starter grants for junior researchers.
“It is disappointing and worrying that the largest part of the cuts will remain on research”, said Marcel Levi, chairman of the board of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
“Although it is good that the parties have committed themselves to the sector, the proposal as it stands only reverses a very small part of these cuts, this is so minimal that science, knowledge and innovation hardly benefit from it,” he added.
Nuffic, the Dutch organisation for internationalisation in education, has warned of the negative impact of the cuts on the quality and international reputation of Dutch higher education.
“Due to the cuts, it will become more difficult to attract international talent for the many labour sectors with job shortages,” a Nuffic spokesperson told The PIE News.
The internationalisation of Dutch education has been the subject of much debate in recent years, regarding the preservation of the Dutch language and controlling the intake of international students.
The government still aims to reduce the amount of English-taught bachelor programs, details of which will become clearer after the final debates of the Internationalisation in Balance Bill, expected to be passed in the new year.
In its current form, the Bill mandates that that at least two thirds of bachelor’s degrees are taught in Dutch, with government permission required to offer courses in a foreign language.
It also contains new rules for capping the number of students on English-language programs, a measure voted for by the house of representatives earlier this year.
In a small sign of hope, it is understood that the four coalition and four opposition parties agreed to introduce more options for English-taught programs in five regions with declining demographics, though details of this exception have not yet been published.
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