Minister of Education wants reduced workload at universities

In his letter to the House of Representatives about the gargantuan workload at universities, Minister of Education Eppo Bruins doesn’t beat around the bush. He cuts the budget that universities are meant to use to reduce the workload. That is obviously “painful”, according to Bruins.

But this doesn’t take away from the duty of the institutions to do something about that workload. What’s more, they should have done so already. In 2020, universities already presented measures to reduce the workload, but not all of those have been introduced, Bruins observes. “I think that universities should hurry up and turn words into deeds.”

Labour Authority
He calls it “worrying” that the workload reductions aren’t progressing much, as the Labour Authority found in May. Employees still have too many tasks and are working too much overtime. In addition, there are regular cases of discrimination, academic-related undesirable behaviour and other forms of social unsafety.

Bruins points out to universities that they might have to be more “selective” in appointing PhD candidates. The pressure on these starting scientists is high because they often experience long-term uncertainty about a job at the university. Bruins made clear nothing will change as far as the latter is concerned, so he calls upon universities to prepare their PhD candidates for a career outside academia.

Universities should also scrutinise their overhead to check whether the regulatory burden could be reduced. In addition, the minister warns that if the Labour Authority doesn’t see any significant improvement next year, it will start “enforcing” the desired outcome.

Pressure on money
One reason why scientists' workload is so high is the amount of time they must spend trying to secure research funding, with the chances of success being relatively small. Universities should do something about that as well, says Bruins in another letter, this one about the distribution of research money, which was sent to the House at the same time.

In this letter, he again refers to universities' 2020 plans. At the time, they promised to make sure fewer people would apply for grants, so the chances of getting money would increase. In Bruins' view, this is another plan that hasn’t sufficiently materialised.

In the years ahead, the minister will make considerable cutbacks in higher education, maxing out at a billion euros per year. Universities are afraid this will only increase the workload.