More and more foreign students are coming to Dutch universities. For popular studies – with an enrolment cap – the chances of Dutch students are being adversely affected. They are being ousted, UvA chair Geert ten Dam told NRC.
For years, the universities have wanted ‘instruments’ that would allow them to make a distinction between international and Dutch students and to manage the influx properly. This relates to major studies like psychology. According to umbrella organisation Universities of the Netherlands (UNL), Maastricht University would also impose a quota for foreign students at the latter study program, if it were allowed to do so.
Stemming the influx
But the fall of the previous government meant that a bill for that purpose got stuck in the Senate. The idea was that higher education institutions would admit students to either a Dutch-language or an English-language track. The institutions could then set a maximum number of freshers for the English-language track. For the intake, you would not be able to discriminate in terms of nationality but you could still stem the influx of foreign students.
Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf tossed the bill into the waste bin: he wants to think some more about it. The UvA wants to anticipate new legislation with an ‘experiment’. However, the minister first has to give his consent.
One-size-fits-all
In an interview with HOP this summer Dijkgraaf said: “I can fill up the toolkit and then every farmer can patrol their own section of the dike, but that doesn’t mean that the dike will be well protected. We need to have a national strategy when it comes to internationalisation: what do we want to achieve together? Such a strategy is lacking right now.”
Most of the universities want to restrict the growth, but not all of them. For example Rianne Letschert, President of Maastricht University, tells NRC that the desire to restrict the number of foreign students leaves her with a “nasty taste in the mouth”. “More than half of our students and academic staff come from abroad. I hear from them that they no longer feel welcome because of the discussion about the growth of Dutch universities that is supposedly only due to foreign students,” she stated in the newspaper.
Despite this, Letschert also sees the need for stricter agreements at the national level, so that universities remain accessible to Dutch students. However, this should not lead to a one-size-fits-all approach, she warned earlier in Observant. A university located at the border befits a different composition of the student population.
HOP, Bas Belleman / DV
Translation: Taalcentrum-VU