Voting advice for 2029: find an MP with a vision on higher education

You’ve just cast your vote. A question of conscience: are you still satisfied with your choice? In the run-up to the elections, remarkably few people seemed to know who to vote for. The reason is fairly obvious: politicians today lack a coherent ideology and have become unpredictable. At the very least, you’d expect a clear vision – but we hardly hear anything of the sort. Time to do your homework, because you never know when the next election will come around.

Let’s limit ourselves for a moment to higher education. In recent years, there has been debate about reducing the number of international students. You know the arguments: a shortage of student housing, overcrowded lecture halls, the Dutch language as a scientific language is under pressure, and so on. Should politicians do something about this? For years, the topic was more or less taboo, but recently, parties have started to shift: we now hear that the number of international students could indeed be reduced, and that the spread of English should be curbed. But why, exactly?

The answer requires vision – and that is lacking. In EM we read a summary of motions on higher education. Leaving aside the fact that the minister can ignore such advice: there is no clear pattern at all in who votes for or against them. Another article reviewed the election manifestos, which mainly showed that many of them failed to address key themes. What are we to make of the fact that D66, CDA and VVD say nothing about Dutch-language degree programmes?

Does political vision still exist in the Netherlands? There were plenty of interviews with party leaders and election debates on a range of topics, but hardly any candidate who could be a future spokesperson on education and have a coherent vision on issues like internationalisation got a word in.

The universities aren’t helping either. Do they have any real ideas? Universities in the Randstad – including Erasmus University – commissioned research into the effects of limiting the number of international students. The outcome: it would cost the economy five billion euros. An interesting finding, but it doesn’t qualify as a vision that offers any direction. The models used in this research are by definition incomplete: they don’t account for the loss of Dutch as a scientific language, students living at home because they can’t find housing, or a possible widening gap between the university and society.

Without a clear vision, making a choice becomes extremely difficult – and that’s exactly what we saw in this election. What are the underlying ideas that all those separate motions in the House of Representatives are based on? How does ‘education party’ D66 see the role of Dutch as a scientific language? What is GroenLinks-PvdA’s view on a possible higher barrier to English-language higher education? Or do they think there is no such barrier? Is it fine with the VVD if students are forced to live at home? And more importantly: why do they think that?

If we start asking the new spokespersons for higher education about this on a regular basis, they’ll have no choice but to develop a vision – and will no longer get away with simply scattering motions around. Next time, we’ll be voting with full conviction.