Senate approves education budget
The Senate voted in favour of the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science’s education budget at the start of this afternoon. This means that the proposed cuts to higher education have become a fact.
Only yesterday, a demonstration took place at the VU as part of the relay protest by universities against the cuts to higher education, but it was actually already too late: this afternoon, the Senate approved the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science’s education budget. The House of Representatives had already approved the budget in December.
This makes the proposed mammoth cut to higher education of half a billion euros on an annual basis a fact and irreversible. D66 in particular made its voice heard during the vote. Through its spokesperson Paul van Meenen, the party made it known that it considers the budget “an attack on the future of our young people”. Thanks to ChristenUnie, JA21 and the CDA who helped the budget pass with a majority. There is great anger and a willingness to take action.
Enraged
“Despite widespread protest from the entire education sector, the cuts to education have been approved,” said Abdelkader Karbache, chairman of the Dutch National Student Union (LSVb) in an initial reaction. “They are cutting into the future of our children and grandchildren. Instead of stopping them, deals were made. If those political parties really cared about our future, they would have voted against it!”
The student union is anticipating a hot spring for the cabinet. Karbache: “If the protest of students, institutions, teachers, companies and concerned parents is not enough to stop these cuts, there is no other option than to escalate.” The LSVb is currently working with the unions FNV and the AOb to organise relay strikes at all Dutch educational institutions.
Plan B
UvA professor Rens Bod, co-founder of WOinactie, is also angry, even though he saw this result of the vote coming. “Time for plan B,” he says. “We are now going to focus our attention on the cabinet’s Spring Memorandum, because the minister is threatening even more cutbacks. We are taking the fight to the entire cabinet, which is denying not only education, but the entire country a future.” Bod fears that the “big blows” are yet to come with the anticipated sharp decline in international enrolment and the current funding system, which in his view does not help to cover the decline in the number of students financially.
“We will continue to protest,” says Bod. “Today, two thousand staff and students from Erasmus University were still demonstrating. There will be more protests in Tilburg, Eindhoven and Maastricht. I also expect that we will join forces with sectors such as healthcare and broadcasting, which are also having to make cutbacks.”
Court
The umbrella organisation Universities of the Netherlands (UNL) has announced that it will take the matter to court . UNL says in a press statement: “We are initiating administrative law proceedings against unlawful cuts to start-up and incentive grants.” Chairman Casper van den Berg: “This is a major blow for students, staff and the Netherlands as a whole. It is impossible to explain why a country that is almost entirely dependent on knowledge has chosen to make such drastic cuts. And this at a time when the Netherlands is increasingly dependent on itself geopolitically and economically.”
