{"id":132888,"date":"2021-11-16T14:53:45","date_gmt":"2021-11-16T13:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=132888"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:25:59","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:25:59","slug":"government-no-longer-seeks-to-realise-e200-million-saving-on-public-transport-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2021\/11\/16\/government-no-longer-seeks-to-realise-e200-million-saving-on-public-transport-cards\/","title":{"rendered":"Government no longer seeks to realise \u20ac200 million saving on public transport cards"},"content":{"rendered":"

A planned \u20ac200 million saving on pre-paid public transport chip cards for students is off the table. The funds thus saved were meant to be invested in higher-quality degree programmes, but according to the outgoing Minister for Education, the plan to ban students from public transport during the rush hour is \u2018highly unrealistic\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Since 2015, the Cabinet has sought to reduce the costs of the pre-paid public transport chip cards by means of measures such as having lectures and seminars taught at night, so as to stop students from commuting during the rush hour. These measures were supposed to result in a \u20ac200 million saving, which sum would then be invested in the education system. A great deal depended on the saving at the time, as it was used as an argument to justify the abolition of student grants.<\/p>\n

One billion euros<\/h2>

While the abolition of student grants would make getting a degree much more expensive for students, the idea was that the higher education sector would gain several hundreds of millions annually in the long term which would allow it to improve the quality of its degree programmes. In one particular year, the measure was even forecast to result in universities gaining more than \u20ac800 million.<\/p>\n

Add a budgeted \u20ac200 million supposed saving in relation to pre-paid public transport cards, and suddenly we were looking at universities gaining a cool\u00a0one billion euros<\/a> per year. VVD, D66, PvdA and GroenLinks liked to bring those one billion euros up as an argument for their plans, as did<\/a>\u00a0the then Minister for Education, Jet Bussemaker.<\/p>\n\n\t

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