{"id":166031,"date":"2024-04-04T13:17:33","date_gmt":"2024-04-04T11:17:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=166031"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:27:16","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:27:16","slug":"minister-expects-quite-a-decrease-in-foreign-language-bachelors-thanks-to-self-regulation-higher-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2024\/04\/04\/minister-expects-quite-a-decrease-in-foreign-language-bachelors-thanks-to-self-regulation-higher-education\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister expects quite a decrease in foreign-language bachelors thanks to ‘self-regulation’ higher education"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to universities’ plans to limit internationalisation, the share of completely foreign-language bachelors will drop by 9 percentage points. Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf expresses this expectation in a letter to the House of Representatives. As a result, a list of measures per institution is not needed, according to the minister.<\/p>\n

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A large section of the House of Representatives wants to curtail the internationalisation of research universities and universities of applied sciences. Many parties believe that, for a start, there should be fewer English-taught programmes.<\/p>\n

In late January, they supported a notable motion<\/a> calling on the government to develop a plan with higher education institutions, within eight weeks, aimed at quickly reducing the number of English-taught programmes. The plans were to include concrete measures \u201cthat each individual institution will take to severely curtail the proportion of programmes taught in English\u201d.<\/p>\n

Own plans<\/h2>

University association UNL (Universities of the Netherlands) and the Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences (Vereniging Hogescholen) have meanwhile sent their own plans, based on self-regulation, to Dijkgraaf, setting out how they intend to manage internationalisation on their own. They did so in anticipation of a bill that Dijkgraaf is currently drafting.<\/p>\n

Overall, the plans address the influx of international students and the range of Dutch-taught programmes available. The universities want<\/a> to create a Dutch-language track within all major English-language undergraduate programmes, for example, while a small number of programmes will be taught entirely in Dutch again.<\/p>\n

Universities of applied sciences have promised<\/a> to cut back their recruiting activities abroad. Their plans will see them introduce a fixed upper limit for the intake of international students for degree programmes in economics at their institutions.<\/p>\n\n\t

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