Big cities will suffer from new language requirements the most

On Tuesday, the Minister of Education informed the House of Representatives that the Internationalisation in Balance bill will remain as it is, but the underlying rules will become stricter.

Stricter test
Almost all programmes taught in another language will have to justify why they do not teach in Dutch. If they do not pass the test, they will have to switch to Dutch. Universities and universities of applied sciences are very concerned about this test. The Council of State criticises it too.

The more programmes switch to Dutch, the fewer international students will come to the Netherlands. Considering Minister Bruins wants to save 293 million euros in the long term by reducing the influx of foreign students, critics wonder whether there is going to be an incentive to force programmes back to Dutch that is not based on educational values. 

Randstad
An official memo sent by the minister to the Parliament on Tuesday shows that the Ministry of Education always had the Randstad region in mind when designing the language test.

Universities in the regions of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht will be hit harder by it, officials explained to the Minister in a memo in August. “That is a conscious choice, in line with the politically desired focus”, they write.

It does not state which political focus that is. It may have to do with room shortages in the big cities, but those problems also occur in Groningen, Nijmegen and Eindhoven.

Exceptions to the test
But universities are not all the same. The civil servants explain that universities and universities of applied sciences “that serve sectors with a labour shortage (such as technical universities) or are located in border and shrinking regions” should be granted exceptions. The test for foreign-language education gives them “many opportunities to offer foreign-language education”.

Institutions in the Randstad region which do not cater to sectors experiencing a labour shortage can only be granted an exception based on the grounds of uniqueness and positioning. Civil servants believe that programmes such as international law, European studies, and bachelor’s degrees in International Business at the applied sciences level will invoke these.

However, as a general rule, Bruins wants to make these last two routes to English-taught education more difficult. The minister warns that courses are rarely "unique" and even unique courses must be able to prove that teaching in another language is necessary “to maintain the field in the Netherlands”.

Solidarity
Universities have long believed that the Randstad region will have a hard time dealing with the cutbacks and language requirements. But if one university is hit much harder than another, this undermines mutual solidarity.

That could still cause problems for Bruins. Institutions must largely decide among themselves how to “share the pain”, as civil servants put it in a memo sent on Tuesday. The focus on the Randstad region “causes an imbalance in self-management”, the civil servants predict.

The ministry already had received "signals" this summer that universities outside Randstad are not interested in joint agreements. They think they “have nothing to gain from it”, the same article states.