The Dutch education budget will still be ¡°disastrous¡± for universities, sector leaders said, despite a reduction to the sweeping cuts proposed earlier this year.

Following weeks of debate, the Netherlands¡¯ coalition government, led by the far-right Party for Freedom, struck a deal with four opposition parties: JA21, the Christian Union, the Christian Democratic Appeal and the Reformed Political Party. The parties agreed to reduce the planned cuts to education, culture and science from €2 billion (?1.7 billion) to €1.2 billion.

For higher education and research, the agreed budget will no longer include the widely criticised ¡°late study fine¡±, which would have seen students delaying the completion of their degree facing a yearly €3,000 penalty. Starter and incentive grants for early career academics, meanwhile, will no longer be scrapped in their entirety but will be cut by €217 million.

The government¡¯s fund for research and science will face a yearly reduction of up to €50 million until 2031, while the Dutch Research Council (NWO) will lose up to €62 million. Initially, funding for international students was planned to be reduced by €293 million; this cut will now stand at €168 million.

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¡°Scientific research is the big loser in this deal,¡± said Universities Netherlands president Caspar van den Berg. ¡°That is particularly bad for the future of the Netherlands, because knowledge is our most important raw material.¡±

Professor van den Berg said it was good that the long-term study fine would not be implemented.

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But he added: ¡°Innovation is mentioned 85 times in the government programme; it is the solution for almost everything the Netherlands is faced with. It is unprecedented that such drastic cuts are being made to the source of innovation.¡±

University of Amsterdam digital humanities professor Rens Bod, who founded the funding campaign group WOinActie, described the budget deal as ¡°unacceptable and reprehensible¡±, adding, ¡°This is disastrous for universities and ultimately for the Netherlands.¡± WOinActie and academic unions were preparing for ¡°disruptive strikes¡±, he said.

¡°Universities will suffer enormous damage, programmes will have to close and research will come to a halt,¡± Professor Bod said. Pointing to the government¡¯s calls for the defunding of ¡°woke studies¡±, he described the cuts as ¡°a direct attack on academic freedom¡±, adding, ¡°I believe we can even speak of ¡®revenge cuts¡¯ on academia.¡±

Remco Breuker, professor of Korean studies at the University of Leiden, said the decision to reduce the budget for starter grants rather than scrap them altogether was ¡°in itself a good thing¡±, but called the move ¡°perverse and obscene¡± in the broader context of the cuts to academia.

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¡°The rest of the cuts will force us to lay off many colleagues, while a minority of lecturers who just started working will receive €300,000 in starting funds,¡± explained Professor Breuker, a former member of the now-disbanded advisory committee on the starter and incentive grant programme.

¡°This is going to tear apart departments,¡± he said. ¡°The starter grants should have been brought back only after the other cuts had been rescinded. Doing this in this sequence will wreak havoc.¡±

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com