Dutch funding boost comes with strings attached for universities

The Dutch government has promised an extra €700 million (£600 million) for universities in the country, although experts note that the funding comes with strings attached.

Pieter Duisenberg, president of the Association of Universities of the Netherlands, said the new money – outlined in a letter from the education minister, Robbert Dijkgraaf – would help to ease “excessive workloads” and would allow “space to do more research”.

Early career academics in permanent positions stand to do well, with the annual budget set aside for individual grants increasing from €100 million to €300 million.

Rens Buchwaldt, a member of the board at Wageningen University & Research, said his relatively small institution would gain an extra €25 million annually, allowing an extra 28 first-year academics to get the €300,000 grant, saving them from chasing external funding.

Barend van der Meulen, head of the Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies at the University of Twente, said universities would have to run internal competitions to decide who gets those grants, and he pointed out that the winners would not be eligible for Dutch Research Council (NWO) grants.

That transfers influence over funding from the NWO to the ministry and means that the latter will need to create new mechanisms to oversee university competitions, a shift that “changes the relationship between the government and the universities”, Professor van der Meulen told Times Higher Education.

Paulina Snijders, vice-president of Tilburg University, said her institution would use the additional funding to improve its staff-to-student ratios and, in turn, the quality of education.

Dutch university heads often cite stingy basic funding as the main reason for hiring entry-level teaching staff on temporary contracts, a practice that has provoked staff to sue universities and to create dedicated campaign groups calling for permanent contracts nationwide.

With the extra funding, Tilburg would “definitely” be offering more permanent contracts, Ms Snijders said, although she could not say how many.

She rejected the idea that the government could now expect politically useful policy changes from universities, such as a reduction in the number of courses taught in English, which would ease pressure from international students on the Netherlands’ scarce housing stock.

“That’s not the way we’re looking at it. This is not quid pro quo because this is in accordance with the shortage of funding we had. We just get the money to do our job well, so that’s no negotiation there,” Ms Snijders said.

Professor van der Meulen said the funding came from a government “throwing money to all sides”, adding that politicians had no choice but to “put some money where their mouth was” to ease long-acknowledged workload issues at universities.

He noted that recent changes to the Dutch student loan system would take money away from universities, making some of the extra funds a “compensation” for lost fee income.

The proposals must now be debated by parliament, after which universities are expected to begin talks with the ministry, including on the details of €200 million a year that will be allocated according to institutions’ discipline-specific research plans.

ben.upton@timeshighereducation.com