Sports could become 500 euros more expensive for students

The Ministry of Education keeps the pressure on. There must be an end to cheap sports, culture and lunch for students and staff. Or as the ministry looks at it: educational institutions should not simply use public funding for “private activities”.

Those private activities therefore include sports facilities and canteens, according to the ministry. According to university association UNL, a sports subscription for students could start costing 700 euros a year, instead of around 200 euros now.

Stuent welfare
‘I find it incomprehensible,’ MP Luc Stultiens (GroenLinks-PvdA) said in a debate with minister Eppo Bruins on Wednesday. According to Stultiens, sports facilities are overwhelmingly important for students' mental well-being. He called the ministry's new rules an example of ‘market forces gone mad’.

But according to minister Bruins, there is no new rule at all. You simply cannot spend money on purposes other than education, research and knowledge dissemination, is his view. If you do, it should be under strict conditions.

Just before the debate, Bruins replied to written questions ‘that student facilities such as sports facilities and university museums can contribute positively to the well-being of students, and thus to their personal development and study results’. But that is not all that matters, he explained.

The minister wants to ‘guard the limits of public funding’. So for sports facilities and canteens, educational institutions must charge the cost price, or else use a market-based rate. ‘This will prevent public money from leaking away or market distortion.’ This also applies, for example, to university museums and the like. In the debate, Bruins reiterated this position.

Building up the pressure
Stultiens is not leaving it at that, he said in a reaction after the debate. "We are going to build up the pressure further. We have the students and universities on our side." He announced a motion.

According to the universities, the new course will only lead to administrative hassles. There is even a risk that no annual report for 2025 will be approved, they warn.

Moreover, the provision of courses and continuing education is also going to cause problems: they will have to become more expensive. Institutions of higher education are also warning about this: the lateral flow of teacher courses would be at stake. These are courses for people retraining for teaching.

Bruins will come back to this, he told the House of Representatives. The ministry is conducting an exploration of a ‘legal mandate’ for lifelong learning in higher education and the role of public and private education in it. ‘Our commitment is to make good use of the qualities of public and private providers,’ he said.