“Bad luck generation” risk losing €100 million, warns Dijkgraaf
A majority of the new House of Representatives wants to shelve a bill involving hundreds of millions of euros for students, colleges, and universities. Minister Dijkgraaf warns of the consequences.
The abolition of the basic scholarship in 2015 was supposed to raise hundreds of millions of euros for the quality of higher education. To ensure that the money was well spent, universities and colleges were required to talk to co-determining bodies. Also, a special committee was supposed to judge whether the plans were acceptable.
Now the basic grant is back and outgoing minister Dijkgraaf wants to scrap “quality funding.” The idea is that the money (€625 million per year) could then go directly to colleges and universities.
This bill also deals with the allowance for the “bad luck generation”, the students that studied in the years when there was no basic grant and who therefore have taken up some debt. The government will take inflation into account, so this allowance should go up.
But the VVD, among other things, would like to make more stricter requirements for the expenses of educational institutions. They think quality funding is a good idea in principle. The bill in question would be controversial, the party believes. Then it will no longer be debated until there is a new cabinet - and that could take months.
Shrinking regions
On the Thursday before the Christmas break, the House of Representatives members of the Education Committee debated it and moved quickly: 10 of the 19 present supported the idea of declaring this bill controversial.
This is particularly bad news for colleges in shrinking regions, objected MP Jan Paternotte (D66). But that did not convince the majority. Claire Martens (VVD) wants to preserve the basis for quality funding for a coming cabinet, she explained.
After Friday’s Cabinet meeting, outgoing Minister Dijkgraaf responded to this in writing. We are running out of time, he wrote. The bill should have passed the House of Representatives and Senate by July 1st and come into effect by January 1st, 2025.
His plan was to add the €626 million to the fixed funding for higher education. “This increase in the fixed base is particularly important for higher education institutions in shrinking regions,” he stated. They will then have more money to absorb declining student numbers.
If that does not happen, a new round of quality agreements will have to be drawn up. That takes a lot of time and effort, or as Dijkgraaf puts it: it leads to “regulatory pressure.” Instead, he wants to create more stability.
Bad luck generation
Plus, with the same bill he wants to ensure that the allowance for unlucky students will increase. Students will soon receive an amount for every month of basic grant they missed out on during the loan system, but that only happens when they graduate. In the meantime, the government wants the allowance to grow apace with inflation: this is expected to involve €100 million. This, too, is in danger of being delayed.
On Tuesday it will become clear whether a majority in the House of Representatives (and not only in the Education Committee) wants to declare the bill controversial, despite these objections. Then the recess will be over and the first votes of the new calendar year will be held. And right after that, the debate on the Ministry of Education’s budget begins.
