Both now retired, Joan Muysken (1948), general economics, and Hein Schreuder (1951), business economics, were appointed professors in the early days of the faculty—although not the earliest.
Muysken: “When we arrived here, there was already a group of ‘young guns’ who’d worked like mad to throw together a study programme. So the young guys had had complete freedom. And then figures like Hein and I swoop in, with our opinions about things. That comes as a shock, for everyone involved. Look, normally you get a job and you slot yourself into an existing setting. You just have to learn the ropes. But there were no ropes here; we had to build everything up from scratch. ”
No ropes? So what about those young guys?
Muysken, with a broad grin: “They were more like—string.”
Schreuder laughs: “Of course, they didn’t see it that way. This was a group that had made a start, and very enthusiastically too, but the composition … let me put it this way: the number of business economists was extremely small. I had no accounting colleagues, no finance colleagues, no marketing colleagues. These are core courses; they belong in the propaedeutic phase. Nobody had given much thought to that. And what you didn’t want was our counterparts at other universities saying: hé hé, down there in Maastricht, they train people who don’t know anything about … you fill in the blank.”
Muysken: “Tilburg—our big competitor, because we were pretty much in their backyard—was threatening to not recognise our propaedeutic phase. Normally after finishing the first year at one economics faculty, you could transfer to another fairly easily. We had to make sure people would be able to continue their studies elsewhere if they wanted to switch universities. The only way to have that guarantee is to show that you’re assessing students on certain textbooks. But the young guys didn’t like the idea of working with textbooks; it wasn’t part of Problem-Based Learning, which they’d already committed to. If you want to sell that elsewhere, you’ve got a problem.”
You were both young at the time, too—not much older than the ‘young dogs’.
Muysken: “That was exactly the problem; it was a kind of schizophrenic role. You’d visit one another’s homes, have lunch together. At the most, I saw myself as a sort of ‘first among equals’. But they knew that when push came to shove—”
Schreuder: “—that we held the ultimate responsibility.”
Muysken: “Exactly. And that we would take that responsibility too. I wasn’t always personally aware that something like that creates distance. At least, I didn’t really feel that distance, but they did. That probably created tension.”
Schreuder: “That’s Joan’s story. For my part, things had to change quite quickly, which made the hierarchy clear from the outset. If I thought something had to be done in a certain way, I’d say so. And explain and discuss it too, of course.”
I’m guessing that wasn’t always easy. Do you end up just pulling rank, as in: I’m the boss?
Schreuder: “No, things never got as far as all that. Truly.”
Muysken: “You hardly ever do that in an academic environment; it’s counterproductive.”
It sounds as though the two new professors—Muysken from Groningen, Schreuder from Amsterdam—worked together in perfect harmony, despite their different backgrounds. Muysken: “We had lively discussions about how things ought to be set up here. Certainly in a PBL environment, you’re constantly having to compromise. Add to that the fact that you come from different fields, general and business economics, which already had a bit of a feud with each other. Very different cultures. Almost out of instinct, you didn’t take the other person overly seriously—you had to force yourself to do that.”
Schreuder laughs: “In the book made for UM’s last jubilee, Joan said that the prevailing view in Groningen was that business economics or business studies was for the stupider people, haha. I found that so funny to read!”
In Schreuder’s view, the emphasis in Limburg on general economics left much to be desired: a design flaw, he calls it. “The memo they drafted for the launch of the faculty, Economics in Maastricht, was written by general economists and geared entirely towards that sphere, including three focus areas: labour, technology and the public sector. As a business economist, I didn’t have much to do with those areas; certainly not with all three, at best with one and a half. But what you also saw was that the general economists—these ones, anyway—had little understanding of the market, haha! They didn’t know what students wanted, which was much more of a business-school setup, and they ignored the trend that was reflected all around the country: that students were opting for the business side of things, some 80 or 90 percent of them. They should have seen that, of course.”
So you were happy to be proven right?
Schreuder: “Well, it was a mixed blessing, because we were already sewn into a certain suit. Officially we were committed to forming an economics faculty, with four professors of general economics, four from business economics and two from quantitative economics. But by the time they’re all in place, you’re five years down the road. And in the meantime, the faculty is out of whack because the students are opting en masse for business studies. That was a huge load on our shoulders that we really struggled with.”
What should have happened?
Schreuder: “They could have opted for something entirely different from the outset, something the region here wanted—a separate business school. Of course, that probably wouldn’t have been politically feasible. Tilburg would certainly have objected, perhaps successfully, given their CDA connections. But to my surprise, pretty soon, in September ’84, (dean) Wil Albeda asked me to start thinking about something that resembled a business school within the faculty.”
Muysken chuckles: “Ha, do you hear that? ‘To his surprise’—as though Hein had nothing to do with it, it came completely out of the blue!”
Schreuder, grinning: “Well, it was common knowledge that I thought it was a sensible idea.”
Were you aware of these machinations, Joan?
Muysken: “No, but I also wasn’t particularly interested. Albeda used to come up with all kinds of exotic schemes...”
Schreuder: “He was always floating ideas.”
Muysken: “…and I’d find myself in the car yet again with Albeda and [Limburg governor] Sjeng Kremers, me in the backseat like some kind of office boy, heading off to whatever castle where some plan would be unveiled, all sorts of vague stories. I was thoroughly averse to it all.”
Schreuder: “Yes, haha, and so they ended up coming to me. To see if I wanted to look into it.”
Muysken laughs. “Hein, the cheeky bugger—together with that other cheeky bugger, Luc Soete—tried to turn this into a business school on several occasions. It didn’t happen, fortunately.”
Schreuder: “Well, it is now the School of Business and Economics.”
Let’s return to the early days. What was it like, building a faculty from scratch?
Muysken: “What would you say, Hein—how on earth did we manage? There were so many conflicts of interest, and yet we were able to do so many good things. I think we had a lot of implicit agreements: you deal with this, I’ll deal with that. And we didn’t meddle in one another’s business; there was a kind of non-intervention mechanism.”
Schreuder: “Right, live and let live. That’s how we did it.”
Muysken: “Paul, on the other hand—he couldn’t deal with those implicit agreements. Or maybe he was just oblivious to them. All Hein and I had to do was give each other the nod and something else had been sorted.”
Paul, that’s Paul van Loon, another professor of business economics, who was appointed shortly after Schreuder. But the pair didn’t hit it off.
Van Loon aside, wasn’t there also trouble between the two of you?
Muysken: “A lot! But it didn’t matter, we both knew we needn’t worry for a second that the other wouldn’t do the things we’d agreed on. Pretty quickly we decided that we’d just have to agree to disagree.”
Schreuder: “Agreed. And just because you have to work together doesn’t mean you have to be friends. The foundations of the cooperation were good. In those early years, when you sat down with a handful of professors, what always came out of it was whatever Joan and I agreed on, haha.”
Muysken: “It was a matter of understanding each other’s position, knowing what you were talking about, and quick thinking. That’s how it went.”
The young guns were focused on developing a curriculum; they had no time for PhDs. But academic staff who don’t do research? Muysken: “Nationally, it was becoming more and more important. Hein was aware of that too, although business economics didn’t have a strong research tradition at the time. As soon as we arrived, we asked: how’s it going with your PhDs?”
Schreuder: “Exactly, that’s what we said: do research, guys! Get your PhDs!”
Muysken: “They looked sick to their stomachs.”
Schreuder: “We, and later Frans Palm from quantitative economics, too, were in full agreement that there should be a research culture, faculty wide. So when it came to divvying up the jobs—neither of us was keen on being dean, haha, I can tell you that now—I became chair of the academic committee. And things went pretty well in those early years. I can’t judge what happened after that; I left in ’91.”
Muysken: “Later it all went pear-shaped, completely overshot the mark. Partly due to national developments, that algorithmic approach: counting A publications, then A-plus publications; publishing in a B journal counts for nothing …”
Schreuder: “… nor does writing a book …”
Muysken: “… not to mention publishing in Dutch.”
Schreuder: “Totally overshot the mark.”
Schreuder has a final point that he is keen to make. “Most innovations—about 80 percent of them—fail. But this innovation, this faculty, succeeded. It’s become international, PBL has found its footing.”
Muysken: “And the faculty produces good students. We’re good—that’s all there is to it.”