{"id":166237,"date":"2024-04-09T11:55:43","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T09:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=166237"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:27:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:27:17","slug":"minister-grudgingly-accepts-quota-for-education-in-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2024\/04\/09\/minister-grudgingly-accepts-quota-for-education-in-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister grudgingly accepts quota for education in English"},"content":{"rendered":"

Things didn\u2019t go as they should, Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf thinks. But he\u2019s no longer resisting the VVD amendment that allows for limiting international student numbers. This is what he told the Senate.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFemke Legu\u00e9<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Last February, the House of Representatives accepted a VVD amendment allowing for a student quota for tracks<\/em> within a programme. This enables programmes to apply such a quota to an English-taught track in order to specifically exclude international students, without this affecting students in the Dutch-taught track.<\/p>\n

This legislative amendment was disputed. Not necessarily in terms of content \u2013 the House of Representatives, the minister and the education sector have wanted this for a very long time \u2013 but in a constitutional sense: the amendment was tabled during the budget debate. This means the Senate cannot simply reject the amendment; this can only be done by rejecting the entire education budget.<\/p>\n

Outgoing Minister of Education Robbert Dijkgraaf strongly advised against the proposal, if only for constitutional reasons. When you\u2019re discussing the budget bill, you can\u2019t just change another act (the one on higher education), he believed. This is also enshrined in the rules of the House of Representatives itself.<\/p>\n

Critical questions<\/h2>

Now the same question is being raised in the Senate, but with one important difference: the minister is giving up his resistance, as demonstrated by his answers to the Senate\u2019s critical questions.<\/p>\n

Is it possible to make a substantive change in the law through the budget, the Senate asked? No, this is unusual and undesirable, Dijkgraaf upholds. But he apparently doesn\u2019t want any further delays. The minister shared his \u201cinstitutional-constitutional objections\u201d in the debate with the House of Representatives and in the end it\u2019s up to the latter itself to decide, he says.<\/p>\n

Should the Council of State issue an emergency recommendation about the amendment? No need, Dijkgraaf thinks, because you can already predict what the criticism is going to be. The Council already said on previous occasions that budget bills cannot be abused in this manner. What\u2019s more, the Council of State already issued a recommendation on the content of the amendment, back when the previous Minister of Education proposed it.<\/p>\n

Indirectly discriminating<\/h2>\n\t
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Read more<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t