The Finance minister Eelco Heinen yesterday with the briefcase containing the Budget memorandum. Screenshot of Lower House of Parliament The academic universities will feel the effects of the cuts as early as next year, the Education, Culture and Science department’s budget for 2025 shows. The outlook is not so bad for the universities of applied sciences. Most of the plans were already known, but now the sums involved and years when they take effect have been specified.
Slow student fine
The plan is to achieve savings from the slow student fine of 95 million euros in 2026, and more than 280 million euros in the following years. At least, that is what it says in the budget, even if civil servants warned last spring that achieving such savings so soon was not realistic.
Internationals
The same applies to the reduction in the number of international students. The Dutch government assumes savings of 29 million euros in 2026, rising to 272 million euros three years later.
But that assumes academic and applied universities will cooperate, and the civil servants point out ‘they have no immediate interest’ in doing so. It is therefore debatable whether we will see a fall in practice in the number of foreign students coming to the Netherlands. And if so, how big will the fall be?
Government wants discussion
Even so, the academic and applied universities will have to make cuts of some sort. ‘The cuts in our budget add up to a substantial amount,’ admits Education minister Eppo Bruins in a press release. ‘But the form those cuts will take is not yet cast in stone in all cases.’
Even so, there is no sign as yet of the cuts being shelved. In the framework coalition agreement, the coalition parties agreed that the ministries in question will have to deal with any ‘setbacks’ in the implementation of that ministerial budget. So if one cut turns out not to be feasible, it will be replaced by a cut somewhere else.
Research at applied science universities spared
The government is cutting research funding but the applied science universities seem to have been spared. ‘Applied, practice-related research will not be affected and will continue as before’ is what the budget statement says. Funding of 39 million euros will be made available annually through to 2031 for research at universities of applied sciences.
Sector plans
The government initially wanted to scrap the sector plans as of 2026, saving 215 million euros a year. The sector plans are plans for collaboration between universities at the national level in various disciplines, for which the universities get extra money.
The universities had threatened legal action to stop this particular cutback. Now the government has shifted the focus: the sector plans will stay intact but starter grants will be cut instead.
Starter and incentive grants
Bruins is cutting 175 million euros in the starter grants for assistant professors with a permanent contract. The assistant professors could use the funding to do research of their own choice. The idea was this would reduce their work stress and take pressure off the Dutch Research Council.
The difference of 40 million euros between the 215 million euros that would have been saved by cutting the sector plans and the 175 million saved by cutting the starter grants will be covered by beginning the cuts one year earlier and by cuts in the Dutch Research Council’s research funding from 2030 (see below).
Cuts of over 50 per cent will also be made in funding for the incentive grants (intended for unfettered research where the universities themselves decide how to allocate the money). The cuts amount to 82 million euros a year, leaving 78 million euros for these grants. This will apply until 2031.
Dutch Research Council
To keep the universities’ sector plans, the Dutch Research Council will get 26.6 million euros less in 2030 and 40 million euros less a year from 2031.
The Dutch Research Council will also have to go without an intended 30 million euros for new large-scale scientific infrastructure and 10 million euros for open science. Another 9.2 million will have to be saved through wages and pricing.
There are also more minor savings planned for the Dutch Research Council. For example, the government is cutting several million euros that had been intended to make the Netherlands more attractive to chip manufacturers. And the Dutch Research Council will lose money earmarked for campuses in Groningen (a boost to compensate for the earthquakes).
Einstein
At the same time, the government is prepared to fork out more money for some things, such as an extra 8.6 million euros for the Einstein Telescope planned for Limburg: an underground observatory for gravitational waves. Some of that money will go on a new Einstein Academy ‘strengthening vocational education in south Limburg’.
