Minister: how will higher education ‘direct’ internationalisation?

Outgoing Minister of Education Robbert Dijkgraaf is stoically continuing to tweak his bill, Internationalisering in balans (Internationalisation in Equilibrium, Ed.), which aims to control the influx of foreign students to the Netherlands.

A sizeable majority of the new House of Representatives perceives international students as expensive and wants to make higher education mostly Dutch-taught again. After all, why would the Netherlands pay for the education of (mostly European) students who will leave soon after graduating?

Importance
In a new letter to the House of Representatives, Dijkgraaf doesn’t say anything about the emotions running high when it comes to migration, let alone mention the outcome of the elections. He does offer the following remark, though: “I share the view that it is important to come to grips with the intake of international students and finding the right balance, also because many students are not staying in the country.”

Will the bill be finished before a new cabinet comes along and, if so, will a majority of the House accept the proposal? Neither of these things is a certainty. Dijkgraaf’s most important message now seems to be: Let's handle the matter with the utmost care. 

His bill had already been published online for an online consultation, in which any citizen is free to comment on it. Needless to say, it sparked a huge number of responses. Now, he’s asking for advice from the Education Council before sending a modified bill to the Council of State for feedback purposes.

At the same time, he reassures the Parliament that he is keeping the pace high. The Education Council has only a month to give him advice “to prevent any unnecessary delays in the legislative process”.

Direction
If it’s up to Dijkgraaf, the bill will provide some "direction" to internationalisation, “first and foremost by institutions themselves and secondly by the government”. But this requires institutions to pick up the gauntlet, which is why he would like to hear from them how they would like to shape that direction. What’s more, he thinks that they should be engaging in "self-direction" in anticipation of the bill.

At the beginning of January, the institutions will need to tell him how they would like to handle such things as choosing between English and Dutch-taught programmes, students’ language proficiency, recruitment abroad and housing problems. The minister would also like to know what they are planning to do to make sure more international graduates stay in the Netherlands.