‘Abolishing English-taught higher education impoverishes the Netherlands’

The Dutch government wants to reduce the anglicisation of higher education to make sure fewer international students come to the country and the treasury can save 272 million euros a year.

However, scientists at the University of Groningen researched the economic effects of such a measure in the long term. What would happen if all Bachelor’s programmes became Dutch-taught? The study, made in July, has received a lot of attention from the platform ScienceGuide but it has not gone through peer review yet.

Students themselves aren’t keen on being educated in Dutch, a representative sample taken by the researchers reveals. This holds even more true for the 400 internationals amongst them. The lion’s share – from inside and outside Europe – would be willing to pay significantly more tuition fees if English stayed the language of instruction.

On average, the 500 Dutch respondents don’t care either way. They wouldn’t pay higher tuition fees to be taught in one language or another. It looks like they do not share the concerns of the coalition parties, the researchers conclude.

75 percent of internationals will leave
If Bachelor’s programmes became Dutch-taught, only a quarter of European students would still choose the Netherlands for their degree. Most of them come from Belgium. The percentage of non-European students who would still choose the Netherlands in this scenario is 13.8 percent. All in all, the Netherlands is at risk of losing at least 75 percent of its international students, according to the researchers.

Higher education (that's research universities and universities of applied sciences) would then shrink by 72,000 students or 8.6 percent. To put things in perspective, this is more than the total number of Bachelor’s students at the universities of Rotterdam, Tilburg, Maastricht and VU Amsterdam.

The researchers observe that the language switch and the signal that internationals are less welcome in the Netherlands will also impact the international intake of Master’s programmes, even if those were to remain English-taught.

Brain drain
What’s more, the Netherlands will become less appealing to international scientists. The researchers assume that, in relative terms, scientists will be just as likely as students to leave the country (8.6 percent). If that happens, the scientific output of the Netherlands could decrease by 19 percent, the researchers estimate. This would have negative consequences for the Dutch economy. The gross domestic product would decline by 1.6 percent.

The researchers warn that such damage can’t be undone, especially now that neighbouring countries are doing their best to become more appealing to highly educated internationals.

They concluded that it would be better to make English-taught programmes more expensive. After all, internationals are willing to pay more tuition fees.