This became evident from the Ministry of Education’s budget and the Budget Memorandum. ‘The cabinet wants to pay more attention to education and research aimed at what the Netherlands needs’, said King Willem-Alexander during Tuesday’s Speech from the Throne. ‘This requires stark choices, both in terms of substance and for financial reasons. One of these choices is to reduce the number of foreign students and make Dutch the standard again in higher education.’
 
On Friday, the cabinet announced in its government programme its intention to introduce the ‘Balanced Internationalisation Act’. ‘For every Dutch degree-seeking student who goes abroad, six international degree-seeking students come to the Netherlands’, the cabinet writes. ‘The large influx of international students puts an unacceptable strain on student accommodation and lecturers and leads to overcrowded lecture halls. Moreover, the Dutch language is under pressure.’ Therefore, the cabinet wants to ‘get a grip on the influx of international students’ as well as ‘counteract the anglicisation of universities’.
 
Institutions will be given room to introduce a specific fixed quota on English-taught programmes. They will also be able to differentiate between students from the EEA (EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) and non-EEA students. In addition, they are required to offer more Dutch-taught programmes and identify which English-taught programmes can be fully converted to Dutch. No new English-taught bachelor’s programmes will be added for the time being.
 
The cabinet believes these measures against internationalisation will lead to substantial savings. Bruins expects to save 29 million euros by 2026, which will increase to 272 million by 2029. The total structural savings will ultimately be 293 million.

Students who, according to the cabinet, take too long to complete their studies will be fined. Those who exceed their study period by more than a year will have to pay 3,000 euros on top of their tuition fees. Bruins expects this to bring in 95 million by 2026. Starting from 2029, the measure is supposed to generate 282 million a year. It is not yet clear exactly what the regulation will look like; according to Bruins, this will be ‘fleshed out in consultation with institutions and students’.
 
Students living away from home will also be worse off, according to financial advisory centre Nibud. As a result of the cabinet’s measures, this group will have a net amount of 113 euros less to spend per month: a loss in purchasing power of 6.6 per cent.

STARTER GRANTS

Another major cut is the scrapping of starter grants. They were introduced by the previous education minister, Robbert Dijkgraaf, to provide starting assistant professors (UDs) with more research space. These assistant professors received 300,000 euros. Scrapping the grants will save 175 million a year. Incentive grants will also be cut: an annual saving of 82 million. These grants are intended for assistant professors, associate professors (UHDs) and professors who are already in employment.
 
What is striking is that these cuts will take effect as early as 2025, a year earlier than stated in the outline agreement. This comes as a shock to university umbrella organisation UNL. ‘Part of the 175 million euros in question has already been allocated by universities. This amplifies the shock effect for universities’, the umbrella organisation writes in a response.
 
Bruins is planning on implementing even more austerity measures. Around 132 million euros per year will be cut from the Research and Science Fund, which has a total annual budget of 500 million. This fund is intended for structural support of independent research at universities and universities of applied sciences. From 2030 onwards, grant provider NWO (the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) will also receive less money to distribute to academics, resulting in cuts of up to 40 million euros per year.
 
On top of that, the cabinet is eliminating the public transport reimbursement for students studying abroad. This will generate 4 million euros in savings in 2026, increasing to 14 million in 2029.
 
There is good news as well. Students who studied under the student loan system will be given an ‘extra allowance’ as of 2027; about 1.4 billion has been set aside for this purpose.

Leiden’s Executive Board already feared sweeping cuts and the cabinet plans confirm that the damage is going to be severe. ‘To put it very bluntly indeed: the quality of our research and teaching is at stake’, the Board writes on the university website regarding the cuts. The plans are ‘unwise and completely irresponsible. This policy will cause untold harm to the strength and quality of Dutch society.’
 
The Board thinks ‘the cuts to the starter and incentive grants are painful: these were intended to tackle the high workload, particularly among young researchers.’
 
Furthermore, the long-term study penalty is ‘bad news for our students and much is yet unclear. What will be the exact rules? And the consequences? No one knows.’

INTERNATIONAL TALENT

And then there is the new internationalisation act. ‘If we are forced to convert some of our bachelor’s programmes to Dutch, international talent will soon be seeking jobs or degree programmes beyond our national borders. And the Netherlands desperately needs this group.’
 
The Board expects not to have to ‘make urgent modifications to the 2025 budget. But this is the calm before the storm’. It is clear that ‘we need to prepare for more radical measures in the face of shrinking budgets. The university now has to start trying to solve this almost impossible puzzle.’
 
The Board will also oppose the plans. ‘In cooperation with the UNL, we will take up the fight against these austerity plans. This could mean campaigning, intensive lobbying and actively seeking out the media.’

Student organisations LSVb and ISO are furious about the cuts. ‘This government programme strikes a crushing blow to higher education in the Netherlands’, says LSVb chair Abdelkader Karbache in a press release. ‘The younger generations in our country will be ruined by the cutbacks this cabinet is planning to make. So there’s only one thing left to do: protest fiercely!’
 
In a response to the cabinet’s policy, ISO chair Mylou Miché states that ‘students are in for a rough time’. A 3,000-euro fine is planned and students’ purchasing power will plummet. ‘Not only will the cuts in education heavily affect students, the introduction of the long-term study penalty creates a harsh reality: studying will become less accessible.’
 
The Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, the Netherlands Institute for Social Research and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency are also extremely critical of the cabinet’s plans in an article in NRC. Saving on education may eventually come at the expense of prosperity. In addition, attracting internationals actually brings more ‘benefits than costs because a portion of these students will stay in the Netherlands and work and pay taxes here’. The cuts are not limited to higher education. In total, around 4 billion euros will be slashed from the ministry’s budget through 2029.
 
Rens Bod, professor of digital humanities at the University of Amsterdam and affiliated with the protest movement WOinAction, has announced on X that they are planning ‘the most disruptive strike in education ever’. Because if these cuts are implemented, ‘the Netherlands will be a backward country within 5 years’.