Education and research “focused on what the Netherlands needs”
The new parliamentary year kicked off today with the King reading out the King’s Speech. It was not new, but the king said it again: the Schoof cabinet wants more focus on the Netherlands and Dutch.
“In post-secondary education, from secondary vocational education to university, the cabinet wants more attention to education and research aimed at what the Netherlands needs. This requires sharp choices, for both substantive and financial reasons. One such choice is to reduce the number of foreign students and make Dutch the norm again in higher education.” So said the king this afternoon in his yearly King’s Speech, in which the new cabinet’s plans were outlined.
Study migration
The number of foreign students in the Netherlands also touches on another topic in the King’s Speech: migration. Among other things, the king referred to study migration (and other forms of migration), as a result of which the Dutch population has grown, “much faster than expected,” to 18 million inhabitants. “That puts great pressure on our facilities and our way of living together.”
Later today, it will become clear exactly how the announced cuts will be distributed and where the blows will fall. Minister of Education and Science Bruins (NSC) earlier announced that higher education will have to cut one billion annually.
