Dutch government announces additional emergency funding for Ukrainian students

The additional emergency funding is designated for the nearly 800 Ukrainian students who were already studying in the Netherlands when the war started. Higher education and MBO institutions currently lack all the means to help Ukrainian students.

Not sufficient
Shortly after the war broke out, the Dutch Minister of Education, Robbert Dijkgraaf, called on universities and universities of applied sciences to help their Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian students and support those with acute financial problems. The ministry made 1 million euros available for this purpose, but that turned out to be insufficient. The additional 2.3 million euros on top of that initial amount is intended to cover the period from March through May.

A spokesperson for the minister announced that institutions have to make their own estimates of how much support each student needs. “They are obviously in the best position to judge this.”

Protected status
Furthermore, it has been decided that Ukrainian refugees – which includes both current and future students – will receive temporary protected resident status. Current students will also keep their student visas.

It is still unclear, however, whether these students will also be able to pay the same tuition fees as European students and whether they will be eligible for student grants. Right now, Ukrainians are considered non-European students, so they have to pay sky-high tuition fees.

Utrecht University has reserved 300,000 euros from its profiling fund to help Ukrainian and Russian students who are in financial trouble due to the war and the sanctions against Russia.