‘It’s like I’ve jumped off a moving train,’ says Mark Rutgers (66) in an office at the Herta Mohr building. After exactly eight years, he stepped down as dean of the Faculty of Humanities as of 1 March 2025.

‘Very odd and strange,’ is how Rutgers describes the feeling of no longer being dean. ‘You fall into a void, but it does feel liberating. A whole lot of responsibility has suddenly been lifted off my shoulders.’ All those years, his secretary managed his schedule. ‘What’s nice is that my schedule for the entire week can now be printed on a single A4 sheet, whereas before, every day would fill a sheet.’

Rutgers jokingly calls the position of dean ‘the faculty’s drain’. ‘A lot of problems are dealt with by professors and institute boards, but the most difficult ones end up on your desk. And it’s often a lose-lose situation, no matter what you do. For example, when two staff members want to become associate professors, and you think both of them deserve it, but there’s only one spot available, you have to disappoint one of them. I’ve had my fair share of panicked moments, especially in the first year. I even worked with a coach back then, someone I could bounce ideas off. On Friday evenings, I’d call them and say: “What on earth am I supposed to do with this?”’

Not only was the deanship ‘much more political’ than expected (‘you wouldn’t believe how many MPs and civil servants I’ve met’), it was also a lot more abstract. ‘As a researcher, you publish a paper; as a lecturer, you directly interact with your students. I worked for a thousand staff members and 7600 students, but the impact of my work was much less direct.’

The faculty faces substantial budget cuts and possibly a reorganisation. How does it feel to leave Humanities in a state of crisis?
‘It’s very difficult. That’s what I was dreading the most. I’ve had quite a few sleepless nights, especially in the last six months. I would lie awake, thinking: how are we going to solve these problems? For example, I really struggled with the proposed scrapping of the Italian programme. What does this mean for the lecturers and students? Imagine if it were your job on the line. You don’t make any friends with such decisions – in fact, lecturers won’t look you in the eye anymore. And you can’t blame them.’

Still, many programmes have been saved. Is that a sign of strong or inconsistent leadership?
‘You want to be a strong administrator, but sometimes it’s also good to take a step back. And we did that twice. In October, programme chairs were given the opportunity to draw up an alternative austerity plan, which resulted in far fewer programmes being scrapped. And in February, we decided to keep Italian after all. That’s not necessarily inconsistent leadership.’

Would you have preferred to stay on as dean for longer?
‘Yes, I would have liked to bring it to a good end. But the Executive Board said: “You’ve served two full terms, and we don’t know how long this uncertainty will last.” And I understand that. In consultation with them, I decided to step down.’

What was your biggest task as dean?
‘When I first started, there was a lot of tension within the faculty and between the institutes. Fellow administrators wouldn’t greet each other and there was competition and distrust between programmes: “If these students choose your programme, they’re not choosing mine.” My task was to bring peace. I think we succeeded in that; I hear the same from academic directors. We made everything as transparent as possible, with HR and finance staff visiting the institutes to explain policies. This is still happening and it creates more openness and transparency.’

What was a low point?
‘The unreliable government. They promised us extra funding but that’s not happening, even though we’re left with much higher wage costs because we hired a lot of people as permanent staff after the unions rightfully stood up for employees on temporary contracts. The current cabinet is destroying the future of the Netherlands. I think it’s safe to say that if we were still in the situation of four years ago, the problems within the faculty wouldn’t be nearly as serious.’

But Humanities’ budget deficit has nothing to do with government cuts. Shouldn’t that be the lowest point?
‘That is definitely a low point as well, and mainly a result of COVID. During the pandemic, we had more students than ever, and they earned more credits than ever. This was followed by a massive downturn: a decline in student numbers, earned credits and PhD completions. There is no way we could have foreseen such wild fluctuations.’

Programmes have to make major cuts to the course offerings. Will this lead to quality loss?
‘Yes and no. It means a loss of specialisations. There will be more shared courses – so for example, a course in the Japanese programme will no longer focus solely on Japan, but on a much larger part of Asia.’

‘That will lead to a loss of depth in knowledge about a specific country, but you could also argue that it contributes to a broader understanding. The programmes themselves were also quite willing to go along with this.’

Because they had no choice if they wanted to survive.
‘Yes, that’s true. We’ll have to give up treasured research in certain areas and that means a loss of depth.’
So we’re moving towards a faculty that provides students with a broader education, at the expense of specialist knowledge. But isn’t that precisely what a university is for?

‘We’re not a vocational school for academia; we’re primarily an educational institution for society as a whole. Half of our students end up working in sectors that have almost nothing to do with their programmes. Only three per cent go into academia; the rest do not. So that means a slight loss for that three per cent, who will have to catch up on that knowledge during their dissertation writing.’

There will also be fewer language courses. Doesn’t that mean that students of German or French who want to become teachers will be less proficient in those languages?
‘For language programmes, this could mean, in concrete terms, that these students will receive fewer hours of language teaching, that’s true. However, the admission requirements for the teacher training programme were also lowered about eight years ago. We stopped trying to attract more students for German and French, because it hasn’t worked for the last thirty years. So now, we’re aiming for students from other programmes who can take French or German alongside their other courses. They can earn at least sixty credits in one of those languages, allowing them to enrol in the teacher training programme. However, during that programme, they will have to take additional courses in German or French.’

Will modern language students be as proficient as previous generations?
‘I can’t say. But I won’t beat around the bush: no matter how you look at it, there will be a loss of quality. We will be left with fewer staff, fewer chairs and therefore fewer specialists. It’s as simple as that. So for students, that inevitably means loss of knowledge.’
You have often called for more government funding, but that hasn’t been granted. The Executive Board distributes funds among the faculties.

Shouldn’t you have turned to them instead?
‘The Board already does a lot for us compared to other universities. Because in Leiden, we receive funding based on ECs (credits, Ed.). That is a great advantage for us, as we have the highest number of students pursuing a second degree at our faculty.’

‘Suppose a student starts a bachelor’s in Astronomy and later adds Dutch as a second programme. Then that student will earn a total of 360 credits. But the university only receives government funding for one bachelor, i.e. 180 credits. At other universities, only Astronomy would receive funding, but Leiden chooses to fund both Astronomy and Dutch with 90 credits each. So the credits are redistributed more fairly. Without this way of funding, we would immediately be in trouble. It also means that other faculties show solidarity with us, because in this example, Astronomy misses out on 90 EC of funding.’

What is the state of humanities education in the Netherlands?
‘We rank among the world’s best, Leiden in particular.’

Still, it’s not helping programmes attract more students.
‘The same is true for almost all countries. Only Germany and Finland are able to find enough teachers for language subjects; there, the teaching profession still has social status. The humanities have an image problem. Take AI, for example: linguists and scientists are both equally responsible for creating the models. Yet many people believe that only scientists are involved. But looking inward, we’ve not done a good job of conveying the importance of the humanities to the public. Our academic research doesn’t always directly translate into something useful, and it doesn’t necessarily have to. However, we’ve not sufficiently communicated its value.’

The humanities are under great pressure across the country. Is that worrying?
‘Yes, it certainly is. We will plummet in all the rankings in the coming years. Simply because we lack the time and staff to maintain our current level. Meanwhile, the humanities are needed now more than ever to understand why Americans look at the world one way and Russians another. We need specialists to interpret those phenomena. Billions of extra funding is now being allocated to defence, but let’s also invest in, for example, the ethical side of things.

‘The future of the humanities, and academia in general, looks quite bleak. I’m apprehensive about the consequences of the government cuts and fear that we will lose not only a great deal of quality and knowledge, but also our international reputation. The question is whether we will ever be able to regain what we’re destroying.’