{"id":117371,"date":"2020-09-03T12:01:47","date_gmt":"2020-09-03T10:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=117371"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:25:02","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:25:02","slug":"van-engelshoven-wants-more-funding-and-more-permanent-contracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2020\/09\/03\/van-engelshoven-wants-more-funding-and-more-permanent-contracts\/","title":{"rendered":"Van Engelshoven wants more funding and more permanent contracts"},"content":{"rendered":"

The next government will have increase investment in higher education and research by hundreds of millions of euros, says Minister Van Engelshoven at the opening of the academic year in Nijmegen.<\/p>\n

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Minister Van Engelshoven at the campus of Erasmus University <\/span><\/p><\/figcaption><\/figure>

In her opinion, the current government has already spent hundreds of millions more on higher education and research and the next government must \u201cdo at least the same\u201d. She calls additional investment \u201cimperative\u201d.<\/p>\n

But that will no longer be possible in the current government\u2019s term of office, as she said<\/a> last year. The funding will have to be fought for during the negotiations to form the next government.<\/p>\n

The eighties<\/h2>

The minister was speaking at Radboud University Nijmegen, where she studied in the 1980s. Then, like now, there was an economic crisis and there was also an \u201cenigmatic disease\u201d going round, she said. Namely AIDS.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe malaise of the 1980s gave way to the 1990s,\u201d she added. \u201cIf that <\/em>history repeats itself, it will be down to the persistence shown by all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in the meantime, studying has taken on a different form than you had hoped. The minister appealed to everyone, but specifically to the first-year students: \u201cYou have started your academic lives. The beating heart of that life is the contact with your fellow students and lecturers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Together<\/h2>

That\u2019s why students have to come up with ways to get together, \u201cwithin the framework of what is allowed,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

What will she be doing between now and the election? She is still working on a proposal for \u201cgreater stability in the funding\u201d of higher education, so that universities of applied sciences and universities have less need to compete for student numbers.<\/p>\n

The greater stability in funding must \u201cgo hand-in-hand with more permanent contracts,\u201d she stated in her speech. \u201cCorona has proven once again that Dutch academia\u2019s greatest resource, its people, has been offered too little security for years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

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De redactie<\/h2>\n\t\t\n\t\t
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