UvA will not participate in University College Haarlem
The University of Amsterdam (UvA) will not participate in the establishment of a University College in the provincial capital of Haarlem. The UvA has rejected an official invitation to be involved in the counterpart of the Amsterdam University College (AUC) that will be established in the former archway prison in Haarlem.
For some time the municipality of Haarlem has been looking at different ways to use the empty archway prison. The Panopticon foundation wants to establish a university college with a special focus on art, culture and entrepreneurship and has been searching for partners to collaborate in the project. Apart from the UvA, the foundation has also been conducting talks with InHolland, a university of applied sciences.
Letter of intent
Panopticon officially asked the UvA to sign a letter of intent to take part in the establishment of the Haarlem institute and to start a feasibility study. The UvA however has decided not to sign the letter, choosing instead to focus on its own strategic plan (‘Instellingsplan’). Both Panopticon and InHolland will continue with the project and are now looking for another university to take part. This is essential because a formal university is needed to legally establish a university college.
Commission D&D
Last week the Commission of Democratisation and Decentralisation (D&D) presented its final report about the future of the UvA. It stated that the UvA should be very careful with strategic joint ventures with other science institutes and that, ‘the lesson we have learned over the least years is that successful joint projects should be started bottom up and not scaled to mega projects’. The UvA board has taken this recommendation seriously.
The existing AUC is a joint venture of UvA and the Vrije Universiteit (VU). Other science research institutes in Amsterdam Science Park are involved in AUC, established in 2009.
