Universities suffer another disappointment: minister sees no point in cancelling language test
During a debate with the House of Representatives this afternoon, Minister Bruins of Education, Culture and Science indicated that he will not be cancelling the controversial language test for foreign-language programmes (Tao) from the upcoming Internationalisation in Balance Act (Wib). The abolition of this test is a condition under which universities are prepared to discontinue English-language bachelor’s programmes.
There has been controversy surrounding the language test for years, as universities see no point in it. Under the upcoming Wib, they would all have to take the test to justify the existence or continuation of English-language bachelor’s programmes.
Last week, the discussion was brought to a head by the umbrella organisation Universities of the Netherlands (UNL), which chose to take the bull by the horns: universities would stop offering English-language bachelor’s programmes themselves in exchange for the language test being scrapped. The UvA announced that it would discontinue its English-language bachelor’s programme in psychology, among other things.
Integral part
But that argument doesn’t hold water: if it’s up to the minister, the language test will remain an integral part of the Wib. In fact, it is actually the most important tool the minister has at his disposal to significantly reduce the internationalisation of universities. The minister put it this way: “To simply abolish the test for foreign-language education, as the universities are asking me to do, would mean completely letting go of the brakes.”
And so the discussion continues, but how it will proceed is anyone’s guess. The universities’ demand to scrap the test has not been met, so one would say that the abolition of English-language bachelor’s programmes will not go ahead, but it is not that simple, because now that their demand has not been met, they have to take the language test. Last week, it became clear that universities fear that many of their English-language programmes will not pass the test and may then be discontinued after all.
