On Monday, the first day of our academic year, I went to a demonstration. The reason for the demonstration are the announced budget cuts for higher education, which our new right/extreme-right government wants to implement. The figures aren’t set in stone yet, but the financial appendix that was presented when the new government took office suggests that there will be a direct cut to the budget of higher eduction of 150 million euros in 2025, and increasing up to almost 1 billion a few years later (I read somewhere that this is equivalent to the size of one Dutch public university). The cuts would come in different ways – some are reversals to budget-increases that were made by the previous Minister (the renowned scholar Robbert Dijkgraaf who left his prestigious job in Princeton to serve as our minister of education); there are also indirect cuts because the government plans to reduce the number of international students (which will lower revenues for universities); and general cuts to HE. The government will also lower the payment universities gets for a student that takes too long to finish their undergraduate degree, and then expects the students to pay much higher fees. Importantly, the previous government made a Bestuursakkoord (a sort of ten-year contract) with the public universities, which this new government now modifies significantly, without agreement from the universities.

There was a real sense of defeat among the participants at the demonstration that I talked to, which I also sense very strongly. Why? [click to continue…]