Royal Academy President Dogterom shocked by new coalition plans

Big budget cuts, reduced English-language education, fewer foreign students and researchers KNAW President Marileen Dogterom is “very worried” about the plans of the upcoming government parties, she said in her annual address last Monday.

Dogterom says: “Although the exact consequences of the implementation remain to be seen, the plans suggest that fostering the open and international character of our science system is not high on the agenda.”

It remains to be seen, you said, which sounds rather calm.

“But a shock is going through the world of education and science. This results from the severe budget cuts, of course, but money aside, what does this mean for the value this new coalition places on knowledge and innovation? What about long-term investment? That indeed remains to be seen when we start having these talks later.”

Can talks change this?

“With most parties, you can agree that for the big challenges in technology and society, we need knowledge and we need to train talent. We do not want to depend on others in Europe and certainly not on the rest of the world for that. We must maintain the strength we have built in education and research.”

They don’t seem to care for that international outlook very much.

“There are more arguments. Three years ago, it was calculated that science was underfunded, resulting in a high workload and problems with social safety, among other things. The last administration’s investments were partly intended to address this. So it is quite a shock to see everything, or at least half of it, reversed. Of course, it remains to be seen whether it will really happen, but we are shocked by this initial signal.”

Is it a signal? It’s right there in black and white, isn’t it?

“I don’t think it’s clear as of yet how much freedom a minister will have in fleshing out those financial paragraphs. Maybe that person will have some leeway to make those cuts in other ways. This is just conjecture on my part, but who knows, maybe some issues are open to interpretation and the new minister will be free to seek other majorities in the House of Representatives. Then the ideas of the opposition parties could also have influence again.”

But for now, for example, there is a cut of €215 million a year to the sector plans in the agreement which foresees that universities jointly agree on the course of education and research.

“Yes, and cutting that budget would be a very bad idea. That was a structural investment. You can argue about those other funds; they were going to expire anyway. But not the sector plans. Around 1,200 people were hired for that. Hopefully, the soup will not be eaten as hot as it is served, but if you take these numbers literally, do you have to fire those 1,200 people?”

So you have to wait for the new minister and hope he or she listens to you?

“We can talk to politicians right now. Again, what was the idea behind the Fund for Research and Science (in Dutch: Groeifonds) where a billion will be cut in the next few years? It didn’t come from nowhere. We can explain that, and then it's up to the House or the cabinet to make choices. This also applies to the sector plans, which were drawn up under considerable political pressure. These plans also foresee agreements to protect Dutch education, for example. Don’t they want that, then?”

It makes you wonder if a reasonable conversation helps when these parties are so intent on cutting back on internationalization.

“We quite understand the challenges facing the system regarding internationalization. There has to be enough housing, which is an issue in some cities. Universities have also not yet been able to set a numerus fixus on foreign-language pathways, so it makes sense to give them more direction and require them to handle it properly. At the same time, the quality of Dutch science is arguably linked to openness and the exchange of talent. You don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

You might think that these parties want to weaken knowledge and science. That makes it hard to hold a discussion.

“I don’t think that’s what they’re after. They mainly want less migration, and part of that involves students and researchers.”

But if you listen to the PVV on climate change or the BBB on nitrogen, and add in the harsh budget cuts or the increased VAT on books, you have to conclude that they are against knowledge and science, right?

“That's going too far to say that the whole coalition is against science outright. Sometimes parties are not interested in knowledge because they think they already know how things are, but that is a different thing.”

Geert Wilders recently spoke at a political congress in Hungary, where academic freedom is in poor shape. Orbán is one of his heroes. Don’t you fear Hungarian conditions?

“That would be taking things much further. What is happening in Hungary concerns not only science; the entire society lacks certain freedoms. The rule of law and journalism are also affected. We must be vigilant about that, but it is not currently an issue. It would be a different story if our government told universities, for example, what they should and should not research or who should become professors. That would impact the autonomy of science.”

You hope to convince politicians with arguments, but have you never considered driving scientific tractors to the Binnenhof, so to speak?

“The other day I was on a radio program about climate policy with a lecturer from the Free University (VU) who made the switch from science to the environmental movement. He said: ‘I can write any number of articles concluding that CO2 emissions must be reduced, but they end up in a drawer, so I have to find another way to get that message across.’ As an individual, I can imagine all sorts of things in that regard, but I am President of the KNAW. Scientists cannot be activists. If we were, we would be accused of being partisan. In the end, I trust that a large part of the general public is indeed interested in knowledge.”