Government alters plans but tough budget cuts remain

In other words, the proposed cuts remain in place. This is the main thrust of the news revealed on Tuesday night by public broadcaster NOS. The government is pressing ahead with cutbacks of nearly one billion euros in higher education and research.

1,200 jobs
However, the planned cuts have been altered to some extent. The universities had threatened to go to court over proposed cuts to their sector plans, worth 215 million euros a year.

These plans enable universities to make national agreements on research and education. They include a pledge to create around 1,200 jobs, especially for young scientists, a target agreed with the previous education minister, Robbert Dijkgraaf.

Starter grants
The government will now leave these sector plans untouched but remains determined to make cuts in higher education. As NOS reports, the new education minister, Eppo Bruins, has now shifted his focus to the universities’ starter and incentive grants.

These grants, funded by the government but allocated by the universities themselves, were intended to lighten the heavy staff workload and create greater “calm and stability” across the sector. The previous government saw the grants as a way to ease the pressure on researchers in a constant battle for Dutch Research Council funding.

Success
The starter grants, each worth 300,000 euros, were intended for newly employed university lecturers, who could use them to finance research at their own discretion. The universities responded to their introduction by offering many of their younger lecturers a permanent contract; so many that there were not enough grants to go around. As a result, in January this year, universities were permitted to split grants in half if necessary. In Utrecht, teams could also receive a grant.

The incentive grants, meanwhile, were designed for all other academics in need of further resources for their research. These grants could vary in size and were also allocated by the university.

Coalition programme
A total of 300 million euros had been set aside for these grants, alongside 215 million for the sector plans. Exactly how the cuts will now fall becomes clear on Friday, when the new government is due to present further details in its coalition programme.

In any case, Bruins is now deviating from the coalition’s initial outline agreement, which made explicit reference to the sector plans. It is unclear how the coalition parties will respond to this change of course. No major resistance is expected given that the cuts will still go ahead.

The blow to the universities will be just as heavy, tweets Caspar van den Berg, President of Universities of the Netherlands. “We had hoped for and counted on genuine relief. This shifts the problem but does nothing to solve it.”