For years, a substantial number of political parties have voiced concerns about the arrival of foreign students at Dutch universities. In addition, the ‘Anglicisation’ of higher education was said to be putting pressure on the position of the Dutch language.
CDA was amongst those parties, but the Christian democrats have since changed course. The party now worries that by curbing internationalisation at universities, the Netherlands is “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.
This is what MP Maes van Lanschot said during the debate on the budget of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. “Wennink also recently argued for more international talent and its importance”, he added, referring to a warmly received report on the future of the Dutch economy.
‘Shooting ourselves in the foot’
As an example, Van Lanschot cited the economics programme at Utrecht University, which is required to switch to Dutch. “Dutch students are now also losing the opportunity to complete this programme in English, even though 80 percent of the terminology is in English”, he said. “The working language of the companies they often go on to work for is English too. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot.”
CDA called for ‘reflection’, which didn’t go down well with VVD. This (current and future) coalition party wanted to cut back sharply on the intake of international students. The policy is now being implemented in a scaled-back form, in part due to CDA.
Universities chose a pre-emptive approach and promised, under the guise of ‘self-direction’, to make some programmes Dutch-taught, such as the economics programme in Utrecht. The Utrecht Executive board initially kept this quiet, so the decision came out of the blue for economists and caused a great deal of controversy.
Anglicisation
VVD MP Claire Martens-America subtly pointed out that until a year or two ago, CDA wanted to counter Anglicisation in higher education. She then shifted the focus to how education aligns with the labour market: how can that be improved?
On the example of the economics programme, Van Lanschot said that plenty of companies want to hire graduates from an English-taught programme. He suggested retaining both an English-taught and a Dutch-taught track. By imposing a registration limit on the English-taught track, the inflow of foreign students could be capped to some extent, he argued.
Martens-America had made this option (a registration limit for a specific track within a programme) possible more quickly through an amendment. She’s frustrated that universities are making “minimal to no” use of it. (For the coming academic year, the figure stands at eleven.)
Minority government
The outgoing minister of Economic Affairs, Vincent Karremans (VVD), has yet to answer questions on his budget. He’ll do so on Thursday evening, most likely passing on questions about higher education to the minister of Education.
CDA and VVD are planning to form a minority government together with election winner D66. The party leaders are currently negotiating on this and aim to reach an agreement by the end of January.
In December, D66 and CDA offered an early indication of their intentions by drawing up a joint agenda. It stated: “Universities will implement the existing agreements on the number of international students.” They were probably referring to the promised ‘self-direction’ by universities in the area of internationalisation.