On the stage of the Aula during the Opening of the Academic Year, a tower of blocks was displayed. These stacked blocks symbolised the contributions universities make to solving societal problems and served as the foundation for the protest by Universities of the Netherlands against the proposed cuts to higher education and science.
Unstable tower
Annelien Bredenoord, who has been Chair of the Executive Board since 1 September, expressed her concerns in strong terms about the government’s plans to cut €1 billion. She used the metaphor of the tower of blocks from which ‘more and more pieces are being removed, making the tower more unstable or partially collapse, forcing you to rebuild it repeatedly’. She described this as a policy of being ‘penny wise, pound foolish’.
Erosion of competitiveness
She also voiced her worries about the Internationalisation in Equilibrium Act, which aims to limit the growth in the number of international students. This too, she argued, destabilises the ‘tower of science’. “Discouraging internationalisation means eroding Dutch competitiveness. We can see this effect elsewhere in Europe. Last year, Denmark reversed its policy of restricting international students after just two years. The reason? A severe shortage of highly educated workers in crucial sectors,” Bredenoord argued.
Outgoing Chair of the Executive Board, Ed Brinksma, also expressed his dissatisfaction. “I urge the minister to abandon this disastrous course. By retreating behind our dikes, we will only become more of a pawn in international movements.”
'Ugly' cuts
Minister Bruins was also given the opportunity to defend himself. Bruins, who comes from the science and technology sector, described education as ‘the foundation of society and the engine of the economy’. He hoped that universities would remain places where people can ‘passionately’ disagree, and everyone is free to express their views.
Bruins described the proposed cuts as ‘ugly’. “There will be cuts, and I fully understand the concerns, but I will unconditionally commit myself to education and research and fight in these financially tight times. However, we are also dealing with a demographic decline in the number of young people pursuing higher education. I hope that after my term as minister, you will at least be able to say: he did his best. I will not be the minister who removes the last block.”
