All this became evident from Faculty Board plans obtained by Mare.
Humanities is in dire straits and must make substantial budget cuts. The reasons for this include students obtaining fewer credits, a decrease in the number of PhD completions and increasing wage costs. According to the most recent prognosis, the deficit is expected to reach 5.7 million euros annually after 2025. And this does not even include the new cabinet’s announced budget cuts.
To address these cuts, the Faculty Board commissioned the Taskforce Education Portfolio to conduct research and issue advice this summer. This resulted in three scenarios, the advisory report states, with scenario 1 being the least and 3 the most drastic. In the latter scenario, out of the 51 programmes, ‘a maximum of fifteen would remain’ and ‘the number of programme boards, programme committees, boards of examiners and boards of admissions’ would be significantly reduced.
The board has opted for scenario 2 but is not going as far as the corresponding advice in certain areas. This is evident from the Perspective 2028 document sent to all programme chairs early this week. For now, these are still just plans that must first go through the Faculty Council and the Executive Board.
Scrapping programmes
The most striking measures to take effect as of 2026-2027 involve scrapping the bachelor’s programmes African Studies and Latin American Studies, which are considered unprofitable due to an ‘insufficient’ number of students. They will, however, retain their regional specialisations within the International Studies bachelor’s programme.
As for Middle Eastern Studies, all specialisations (so-called tracks) – Persian, Turkish, Hebrew, Islamic Studies, Arabic and Modern Middle Eastern Studies – will be scrapped. What will remain of this programme is unclear. The Linguistics and Ancient Near Eastern Studies programmes will also have to ‘substantially’ reduce their number of specialisations.
In addition, the board intends to merge several programmes into new bachelor’s programmes. For instance, Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, Korean Studies and South and Southeast Asian Studies are to be merged into Asian Studies. The German, French and Italian programmes are planned to be combined into the bachelor’s programme European Languages and Cultures.
The Executive Board has advised the Faculty Board to ‘reconsider this plan and engage in national discussions on which programmes should be retained’. The taskforce also raises a criticism about its own proposal: ‘The establishment of a bachelor’s programme in European Languages and Culture could be another step in the decline of language education and may not be enough to sustain it in the future.’
The board has not adopted all of the advice presented in scenario 2. For example, the taskforce’s advice states that Russian Studies and English should also be part of European Languages and Cultures. However, the board wants to keep these programmes independent.
The advice further suggests that the bachelor's programme Religious Studies should be eliminated due to the ‘low intake’ of seven new enrolments per year on average and because it is ‘not a unique programme’, but the board wants to keep this programme running independently as well.
In addition, some (research) master’s programmes will have to go. Like the bachelor’s programmes African Studies and Latin American Studies, the corresponding research masters will also be discontinued ‘due to low student numbers’. The research master’s programmes Asian Studies and Middle Eastern Studies will be merged into Area Studies.
The board is also considering discontinuing the two-year master’s in Philosophy and the one-year master’s in Latin American Studies, but this will require ‘national coordination’ and a ‘cost-benefit analysis’. The taskforce recommends eliminating the two-year master’s programme in Philosophy ‘due to the low intake of five students on average’.
300 fewer courses
In addition to merging and scrapping programmes and specialisations, the board wants all programmes to revise their curricula. That means: fewer (elective) courses, larger courses, and more shared courses. The number of minors must also be ‘revised and reduced’.
The goal of these measures is to eliminate at least three hundred courses, which ‘across the board will lead to reductions in teaching effort’ equivalent to ‘more than 60 FTE of academic staff’. The board estimates that, in due course, support staff could also be reduced ‘by 25 to 40 FTE’. ‘But not before 2026, because the deployment of support staff will be needed for transitional arrangements.’
Whether these measures will lead to lay-offs any time soon has yet to be determined. ‘The aim is to draw up a new staffing plan based on the present proposals in the spring’, the board writes. ‘If the discrepancy between current and required staff is too great, a reorganisation will most likely have to take place. But the moment for such a reorganisation does not seem to have arrived yet.’ However, the faculty has already introduced a hiring freeze and a so-called vacancy filter, where ‘the need to fill each vacancy is evaluated very carefully’.
It is still far from clear how much money the planned measures will save, reads the advice: ‘The taskforce can say little to nothing about the savings in FTE or euros a proposed measure will bring, or about the resulting financial situation.’ Reasons for this include the ‘unpredictable outcomes, duration and costs of a potential reorganisation process, and the uncertain effects of national factors such as the Balanced Internationalisation Act’. Moreover, ‘major changes such as the elimination and merging of programmes usually only start to generate savings after about five years, and these savings are difficult to calculate at this stage’.
job losses
The taskforce advises the Faculty Board to ‘carefully consider and calculate each measure before making decisions with far-reaching consequences’. The measures could also ‘come at the expense of the richness, breadth, depth and coherence of the expertise and programmes’ at the faculty, and could have ‘drastic consequences for individual staff members’, such as ‘job losses’.
Therefore, the advice was issued ‘with great reluctance’, but also ‘based on the understanding that our faculty is currently still in a position to shape its own future’.
The Faculty Board is holding discussions with the programme chairs over the coming weeks. They are shocked by the plans. ‘My big question is: what is the vision and where is this heading?’ says Mirjam de Bruijn, programme chair of African Studies, to Mare regarding the plan to scrap both the bachelor’s and research master’s programmes. ‘This is not a solution. Aren’t we supposed to be a knowledge economy? Africa is the continent of the future. This is the university where you learn about the world, so it’s vital that the world is actually represented here at the university.
Moreover, Leiden is the only place in Europe where the programme is available in English, says De Bruijn. ‘That’s unique. The university receives a special budget for unique programmes, but apparently, it’s not enough to keep it running. If the plans are approved, we can keep going for five more years, but from 2026 onwards, the programme will be phased out and no new students will be admitted.’
Is it any consolation that a stripped-down version of African Studies will continue to exist in the form of a specialisation within the International Studies bachelor’s programme? ‘That’s only four courses plus a language course’, De Bruijn responds. ‘This feels rather disrespectful to the discipline.’
Panic
‘People are definitely panicking about this; it’s all anyone is talking about’, says Korean Studies programme chair Remco Breuker. ‘International staff members, in particular, feel threatened.’ As per the plans, his programme is to merge into the new bachelor’s programme Asian Studies.
He expects the Faculty Council to feel caught off guard. ‘I don’t have confidence that they will stand their ground on this. If the board wants something to happen, it usually does. That’s not how it should be, but it’s often how things go. And it’s happening far too quickly.’
Anne Sytske Keijser, programme chair of Chinese Studies: ‘I only want to take action when it’s clear what I’m supposed to do and why. We’re not going to create a whole new programme from scratch without knowing the parameters; we first need to assess whether the situation is really that dire.’ She does consider her programme to be one of the lucky ones ‘amid all the budget slashing’: ‘Some programmes are being scrapped, which is much worse. At least we will continue to exist.’
In response to questions from Mare, the Faculty Board, which had initially stated it ‘needed more time’ to provide answers, decided to inform all staff members of the radical plans on Wednesday afternoon. The advisory report was attached to that e-mail.
The board also informed Mare that ‘adjusting the education portfolio’ – in other words, cutting programmes and courses – is ‘unfortunately unavoidable’ in light of the budget cuts. ‘We are fully aware that this is a drastic and difficult decision that will greatly impact staff and students.’
The taskforce’s advice is only ‘a first outline’: there will be internal consultations in the coming weeks, after which ‘any necessary adjustments to the plans’ will be made. ‘Following that, a concrete plan will be presented to the participation body, in accordance with the regulations.’
When asked why these plans are being proposed even though the taskforce has stated that it is difficult to determine how much money will be saved, the board responds: ‘An accurate calculation can only be made once it is clear which substantive choices the board definitively wants to make. However, the board highly values internal alignment and is currently focused on aligning the content first.’
Why the bachelor’s programmes in Russian, English and Religious Studies get to remain independent, while the taskforce recommends incorporating the first two into European Languages and Cultures and scrapping the latter, remains unclear. ‘This is the planning stage, no final decisions have been made yet.’
The Perspective 2028 document states that the plans could potentially save 60 FTE of academic staff and 25 to 40 FTE of support staff. When asked whether a reorganisation is inevitable, the board replies that ‘no decision has been made on this yet’ but that ‘a reorganisation with consequences for the staff involving the mentioned FTE numbers is definitely a real possibility’. ‘Because the research phase is still ongoing, no certainty can be provided to staff members for the time being. We find this very unfortunate.’