An enrolment cap, no obligation to learn Dutch and other surprises

Robbert Dijkgraaf's far-reaching draft bill, Internationalisering in Balans (Internationalisation in Equilibrium), has already been the subject of much discussion before even being submitted to the Parliament. The outgoing Minister of Education took his time to draft it, even though MPs kept telling him to hurry up.

The bill’s main points were already known, but the final version contains several surprising elements. For example, international students will not be obliged to learn Dutch after all. And yes, international employees may be fired due to the new language policy.

Language of instruction
The bill is to strengthen the position of the Dutch language in higher education. Even international students enrolled in non-Dutch-taught programmes will have to learn a little bit of Dutch as this will increase the probability of them joining the country's labour force.

At the moment, educational institutions have the "duty of care" to promote students' communication skills in Dutch, but international students are exempt from that requirement. According to the minister, most universities only offer so-so Dutch courses and that has to change. The minister wants to make "administrative arrangements" with clear points of departure and measurable results. The term "communication skills" has been replaced with "language skills" and international students are no longer exempt.

Or are they? The bill doesn’t mention a "best effort requirement" for students. Dijkgraaf says he considered doing so. “In that case, an institution would only be able to present a student with a diploma once it has been determined they have met this best effort requirement.”

The bill doesn’t state a required level of language skills, nor does it introduce a legally required number of credits for Dutch as a subject. Dijkgraaf prefers to leave this up to the institutions as law students may need different competencies than chemical engineering students, for example.

He warns higher education institutions that they must demonstrate that they can handle that freedom. Otherwise, stricter rules will be introduced after all.

Dismissals
Some programmes will go back to being Dutch-taught or will get a Dutch-taught track alongside the English-taught one. Higher education institutions have announced resolutions to this end, but the minister (or his successor) might go even further in the future. Existing English-taught programmes will go through a one-off assessment to evaluate whether they should indeed be taught in a language other than Dutch.

This may have repercussions for staff members. “Non-Dutch-speaking staff might have to leave. They might have to be dismissed because they’re not able to teach in Dutch”, the minister acknowledges. “Another option would be to make it mandatory for these staff members to learn Dutch.”

The universities estimate it would take about five years to get these teachers’ Dutch skills up to a sufficient level. The minister (or his successor) will take this into account when determining a "reasonable term" in which English-taught programmes will have to go back to being Dutch-taught – that is if they decide to take that route after all.

Freedom of educational institutions
Many wonder why politicians are interfering with these matters in the first place. Aren’t higher education institutions supposed to be autonomous? Dijkgraaf makes a short work of this argument. If they insist on being autonomous, they have to make more of an effort. “The government observes that the autonomous choices made by individual institution boards have not been sufficient to solve the societal issues that have arisen concerning international student mobility.”

Now he’s forcing them to engage in mutual consultation, also known as "self-regulation plans." This relates to topics such as agreements on student housing, the administrative language at institutions and the Dutch skills of foreign teachers. On top of this, there are the "administrative arrangements" with the ministry.

If the system doesn’t yield the desired results, the minister can intervene. He may, for example, refuse to grant permission for starting a non-Dutch-taught programme (which also goes through the Committee for Higher Education Effectiveness), restrict the number of students and even, in the most extreme of cases, revoke the permission for such programmes.

Emergency fixed quota
Higher education institutions will be given the option of setting an enrolment cap: if they’re faced with an unexpected level of interest in their programme, they can restrict the number of first-year students. They have until March 1 to make such a decision. This mechanism is “exceptional and very drastic”, writes the minister, because the conditions change during the registration process.

The deadline has been chosen so that Dutch and European students hear about it in time and aren’t taken by surprise. An emergency may arise after March 1, of course, but Dijkgraaf doesn’t think that is very likely. In practice, this only concerns students from outside the EU, who have to express their interest at an early stage due to visa requirements.

Tracks
Introducing a Dutch-taught and an English-taught track to the same programme seems easy, but many systems won’t be able to cope with that. Registering platform Studielink, for example, estimates that the modifications will take around four years to implement.

This means that, in the short term, programmes will not be able to distinguish between Dutch and non-Dutch-speaking students when adopting an enrolment cap. An amendment by the political party VVD, which was adopted by the House of Representatives a few months ago, anticipated this development, but it won’t save any time.

The previous bill
A bill had previously been passed with roughly the same goal. Titled "Language and Accessibility", this bill was approved by the House of Representatives in 2019, so it was down to the Senate to debate it. When Dijkgraaf took office, he shelved this bill. Why?

The old bill said that programmes taught in foreign languages needed to have an "added value" for the students. This phrasing was vague, so Dijkgraaf adapted it. His new bill focuses on effectiveness: instead of added value for the student, it talks of “added value for society”.

The ramifications are interesting. The old bill stipulated that the Dutch-Flemish Accreditation Association NVAO would assess the choice of language of instruction. In other words, the language needed to contribute to the quality of the programme. In the new bill, this task is assigned to the Committee for Higher Education Effectiveness, which will advise the minister, on whose shoulders the final decision lies.

What this boils down to is that the language of instruction will become more political. Or, as Dijkgraaf puts it, the minister is given "overriding authority" as a "last resort." If the institutions don’t play by the rules or if the committee isn’t strict enough, the minister can intervene.

Another striking difference: the Language and Accessibility Bill only provided the option of setting a fixed quota for non-Dutch-taught tracks in Bachelor’s programmes and two-year associate degrees. In Dijkgraaf's bill, Master’s programmes are also included.