A sad day, is how Hans Biemans of the UG’s board of directors describes Tuesday’s Prinsjesdag (Budget Day). The biggest setback: the start-up and stimulus grants will disappear as early as 2025.
It was already known that the new government would drastically cut the higher education budget, as was the elimination of the starter and stimulus grants to keep the sector funds. But it is a major setback that those grants will disappear as early as 2025.
‘This will cost the university some 32 million euros a year’, says Biemans. The funds were intended to provide young and established researchers with resources for their research. Many faculties were relying on these grants to hire new PhD candidates, especially after last year’s budget cuts.
Careful
‘We did try to deploy this instrument carefully’, says Biemans. ‘The funds for PhD students who have already been hired under these grants are secure. But for a number of other universities, this does pose a real problem, because they have taken an advance on future money.’
While it’s good that the UG has been careful, the loss of the grants is still a blow. ‘Research and education need multi-year stability to achieve good results’, Biemans stresses. ‘This was one of the measures agreed with the previous minister to create peace and space, and now, that’s being dismantled again in 2025.’
Internationalisation
What the UG will also have to deal with is the impact of the Internationalisation in Balance (WIB) Act. The government wants to reduce student migration in the bachelor’s phase. And although there will be an exception for ‘technical studies’ and the government wants to take into account ‘local circumstances’, it assumes a cost saving of 293 million euros.
Biemans finds it ‘remarkable’ that this savings has already been budgeted. ‘We don’t yet know exactly what the law will look like or what it will bring.’ However, the budget does indicate that the law should take effect from the 2026-2027 academic year.
Action plan
Although the budget still has to pass the Lower House and many practical consequences are still unclear, the UG is already preparing itself. For instance, eight working groups have been set up to see where the cutbacks – which may rise to €80 million in 2030 – are to come from, and where the UG may be able to get extra income.
The board expects the working groups to have worked out measures on paper by the end of this year. An action plan – in consultation with the employee participation body – will then be drawn up in early 2025.
Tough decisions lie ahead, Biemans predicts. ‘We have made no secret of that in the past period. I am in a bad mood because of the cabinet plans. My guess is that the rest of the community will feel the same way. But the UG has faced financially dark clouds before in the past and we have always come through them well.’