UG vice president Hans Biemans
‘We’ve stopped growing’
Door Giulia Fabrizi
By Giulia Fabrizi
So it looks like the university is suddenly in dire financial straits. What’s going on?
‘It’s a confluence of three different things, really. The first is the rising energy prices. We knew it would get bad in 2023, and it has. We’re currently buying energy for 2024-2025 and while prices have doubled overall, 2023 is an outlier. In 2019-2020, we paid approximately ten million in energy, and that will double by 2024-2025.’
Since we want to be a good employer we agreed to the salary increase
‘The university has also grown steadily over the past few years. The ministry of Education, Culture, and Science (OCW) creates a prospect on which they base the funds they make available. The ministry was expecting us to grow even further, and we took that into account in our plans, as well. But we’ve stopped growing. Last year was the first time we had to adjust our numbers downwards, and everyone was surprised that we had to do it again this year. That also means we get less student compensation. That abatement is up to ten million now. It will go up to 18 million over the next three years.’
‘Then there’s the collective agreement. Our staff is facing inflation, so it makes sense for the unions to want to translate that into a salary increase. Since we want to be a good employer we agreed to the 9-percent increase, just like we see elsewhere in education. But the state isn’t compensating us for all of that. It will cost us a total of 44 million, but we’re only getting compensated for 22 million.’
But that has happened every year, right? The salary increase not being fully covered by the government compensation?
‘True, it’s always been that way. But this time it’s a problem because the increase is so high. We have to pull the part that isn’t covered from subsidy indexations from the Dutch Research Council or from Europe. Even though it’s usually matched, that doesn’t happen right away. So now there’s a hole in the budget.’
Have faculties and service departments been told to take another hard look at their budgets, too?
‘Yes. The board of directors have told them what our concerns are. That means both faculties and service departments have been instructed to balance their books by 2026. We’d agreed on it with them last year in an effort to anticipate the increase in energy costs. So everyone has to do something extra.’
We’re already seeing the first effects of the adjusted budgets. Some faculties have said they won’t be able to hire new people anymore. But weren’t many faculties already suffering from a staff shortage?
‘Here’s the way OCW sees it: we got the money because they thought we’d get more students and it would allow us to hire people ahead of time. That means people were hired in anticipation of an expansion that will never happen.’
People were hired in anticipation of an expansion that will never happen
‘Another good example is housing. Our investment plans for housing are based on forty thousand students, but we’re not going to reach that number. We also have to adjust our plans because of what we know now.’
‘The faculties have hired people in anticipation of that expansion and now they have undo part of that. One way is to not fill new positions and figure out if it’s really necessary to fill a position when someone leaves.’
Hasn’t the university invested in reducing work stress over the past few years?
‘We’ve invested so much over the past few years to reduce work stress and we’re really happy that we succeeded. But knowing what we know now, perhaps we could’ve been a little less pro-active. We wouldn’t have had to make quite as many adjustments as we do now. But then we wouldn’t have been able to reduce as much of the work stress as we have.’
That sounds like some positions will eventually be eliminated, or some positions won’t be created after all.
‘We’ve partially solved the stress issue by giving faculties free reign over their workforce. Now, we have to figure out how to find the balance in this new financial situation. That doesn’t mean we’re going to go around firing people, because there’s also natural turnover and temporary contracts that are ending. But we will have to start making some choices, because we don’t want to keep doing what we’re doing but with fewer people. That’s a recipe for disaster.’
Do you think you’ll be able to comply with the collective agreements from the past few years? You’re supposed to be giving support staff and lecturers more permanent contracts.
‘That’s going to lead to some difficult choices. Some of those contracts will always be temporary, because there will always be temporary work. We’re also seeing a turnover due to the ageing population, and that’s only going to increase. We’ll see more people retire in the next few years than we have in the past. We’ll be able to make use of the positions that are freed up there, so we may not run into trouble with the agreements, after all.’
Some contracts will always be temporary, because we’ll always have temporary work
‘It’s too early to say, really. The faculties are currently making their choices and some of them have told me how they’re handling it. They’re really trying to focus on the natural turnover and in the better organisation of processes, because they’re trying to keep that work stress down.’
The unions are upset that the salary increase is being partly blamed for the issues. They say the university had negotiating power and they should’ve anticipated this problem. Wouldn’t it have been a better idea if the university had said that 9 percent was too much, that you couldn’t afford it?
‘We can keep talking about the salary increase and whether it’s too much or too little, but we just wanted the university to be a good employer and we could see what was happening around us in terms of salary developments. But the actual problem lies elsewhere: we only have one budget and the setbacks just keep coming.’
‘We didn’t see it coming that the state would short us on compensation. There was another instance in 2022 that we hadn’t expected either, but we thought it was a one-time thing. We figured it was because of the reinstatement of the basic grant, which caused students to wait a year to start studying after graduating from high school. But then it happened again this year.’
‘The energy costs are just a really big deal. The separate parts are all perfectly reasonable, but the fact remains that the setbacks just keep coming and we have to try and prepare for the future. We understand that it’s tough to make choices; budget cuts are awful. But we all have to stick together and talk about it and make the best choices for our university.’