Now that three million euros has been released through the so-called Region Deal, a cooperation between the government and the regions to stimulate the wellbeing, housing and job prospects in a particular area, it is time to get started. Maastricht University and Heerlen municipal council will each supplement that amount with a further 1.5 million euros.
“We can now go to the next phase,” explained President Rianne Letschert, “exploring, looking into how we can shape our role, what we can develop in terms of lab space and other education infrastructure.”
UM is already a familiar face in Heerlen, although for the moment, mostly for research. BISS, the Business Intelligence and Smart Services institute on Brightlands campus, was founded in 2015. Researchers and entrepreneurs there work together on innovations in data processing and artificial intelligence. But UM is missing the education side of things and wants to invest in degree programmes in the fields of sustainable regional transformation, digitalisation, and the implementation of robots.
Mines
So will we see dozens of students wandering around the Brightlands campus (near the APG pension fund), or are they looking for a new university building? “It is not clear yet where we will be, but we are keeping an eye out for suitable locations.” The first course that will be ‘housed’ in Heerlen is the three-year Bachelor of Urban Sustainability Studies from YUFE, an alliance between European universities. Letschert: “That topic is a perfect match for Heerlen, a city that has seen many transformations.” In the 1960s, the mines closed, a crushing blow to the whole region, both economically and socially. Heerlen-Noord, a large part of the city, was earmarked by the government as one of the twenty areas in the Netherlands where the quality of life and security are under pressure. One of the reasons for launching a National Programme to help improve wellbeing, language skills, and the greenery around neighbourhoods.
The YUFE bachelor is “not massive”, said Letschert – the expected number of students in the first years is 50 to 60. Not to mention that it is still uncertain whether a green light will be given by the Committee for Effective Higher Education (CDHO), the committee in the Netherlands which examines new programmes to determine the value and whether there is a demand for it on the labour market. The application has only just been submitted. Although the first students of the YUFE alliance are set to start in September, the question remains whether that will be achieved.
Letschert was very clear when asked where these new first years should live: “In Heerlen.” Is that realistic? Wouldn’t people who move to study in Limburg prefer to live in the student city Maastricht? “The whole point is that Heerlen will benefit from this.” According to recent analysis published by PricewaterhouseCoopers (commissioned by UM, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences and Heerlen), the employment opportunities and the population will increase thanks to this investment in education. The city will be more attractive, if all goes according to plan. According to PWC, UM will have to invest about 70 million over the next decade, assuming a very ambitious growth scenario.
Message
A university willing to invest is a rare phenomenon in these times of announced education cuts. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is facing hard times, as are the technical universities of Delft and Twente. Serious budget cuts are required, redundancies are not off the table.
Maastricht, on the other hand, is spending money – isn’t that a hard message to sell to fellow administrators in the Netherlands? “Our talks in Heerlen didn’t start yesterday. We have been talking about this cooperation for years, on top of our existing investments in the campus in Heerlen. The request for the Region Deal was approved, so it would be unwise to slow down now in the face of political uncertainty. Furthermore, this is a way to show them: we need each other in this region. The council does know, however, that should the Internationalisation in Balance Bill (WIB) become law [aimed at reducing the number of international students], without special measures for border and contracting regions, then we will attract fewer students, and that would make it very hard to realise out plans in the expected time frame.”