The education budget

Although a great many people watch the alleged lucrativefinancial position of University College with an envious eye, DirkReedijk, staff member in charge of quarters and dimes at theKromhout grounds, thinks there is not a reason in the world whythey should. "In the first two years of our existence we did manageto save some of the money we got from Utrecht University for ourorganization. As a result, we have about two million guilders inreserve right now, which should help us balance the initialfinancial losses in the next years. As from September 2001 whensome six hundred students will be enrolled here, we will receive afixed amount per student to meet both educational and staffexpenses, just like all other university faculties. The exactamount has yet to be decided on, but I don't expect much of asurplus. We estimate that this year - 1999-2000 - we will have adeficit of about 600,000 guilders, which we will have to compensatefrom our reserve."

Using the university subsidy, which at this moment amounts tonearly five million guilders, University College hires teachersfrom the faculties. One of the most important issues we'll have toattend to in the near future will be the fee the faculties shouldreceive for hiring out their teaching staff. At the moment it isagreed that per course faculties receive fifteen percent of theteacher's salary, based on a full-time contract. This means thatthe College will have to pay considerably more for a professor thanfor a junior teacher. Whereas destitute faculties might well findit attractive to hire out well-paid employees to the College,replacing them with less well-paid substitutes, the College itselfwill have to watch its step in order to strike the right balancebetween the highest level of teaching quality and the moneyavailable. According to Reedijk, this year the right balance wasmore or less found, "but in the future we will have to give a fairamount of thought to the best way of financial settlement with thefaculties, because there is a huge gap between the 48,000 guilderswe have to pay for a professor each year, and the 30,000 guildersit will cost us to hire a salary scale 10 teacher for the sameamount of teaching hours.

EH