On Tuesday, the minister of Education sent his plan to the House of Representatives: the Internationalisering in Balans (Internationalisation in Equilibrium) bill is staying the same, but the underlying rules will become stricter.
Stricter test
This is especially true for the test for instruction in another language. Almost all study programmes in other languages will have to give justification of why they are not teaching in Dutch. If they don’t manage, they have to switch to Dutch. Higher education institutions are very worried about this test and the Council of State voices criticism as well.
It comes with a cutback. The higher the number of programmes switching to Dutch, the fewer internationals will come to the Netherlands. Over time, Bruins wants to save 293 million euros per year this way.
Randstad
An official memo that the minister sent to the House of Representatives on Tuesday shows that the Ministry of Education always had the Randstad in mind when designing the language test.
Higher education institutions in the Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht regions will be more affected, the officials explained to the minister in a memo in August. 'That’s a conscious choice, which aligns with the politically desired focus', they write.
Which political focus this is remains a mystery. It could be due to a shortage of rooms for rent in the major cities, but this is also a problem in Groningen, Nijmegen and Eindhoven.
Exceptions to the test
No two institutions are alike. The officials explain that it will be easier for higher education institutions 'that cater to deficit sectors (such as universities of technology) or are located in border regions and areas facing depopulation' to invoke exceptions. The test for instruction in another language gives them 'many opportunities to provide non-Dutch-taught education'.
For Randstad institutions outside the deficit sectors, there are only two possible grounds for exception: ‘uniqueness’ and ‘positioning’. Officials think that programmes like International Law, European Studies, and the vocational Bachelor’s programme in International Business will invoke these.
But in general, Bruins wants to make the latter two routes to English-language education more difficult. The minister warns that programmes are rarely ‘unique’ and even unique programmes must be able to prove that teaching in another language is necessary 'in order to preserve the professional field in the Netherlands'.
Solidarity
The idea that the Randstad will have a hard time due to cutbacks and language requirements is one that universities have had for a while now. But if one university is affected much more than another, this will undermine mutual solidarity.
This may well come back to haunt Bruins, because it’s mostly up to the institutions to jointly decide how to 'distribute the pain', as officials called it in a memo that was sent as an enclosure to the plan on Tuesday. The focus on the Randstad 'will cause an imbalance in self-management', the officials predict.
What’s more, this past summer the ministry already received ‘signals’ that universities outside the Randstad don’t feel like making joint agreements. They think 'they have nothing to gain from those', the same piece reads.
Universities of applied sciences
In this regard, the situation at the universities of applied sciences is a bad omen. There too, people are having trouble to get onto the same page, although this has less to do with language policy. President of the Saxion Executive Board Anka Mulder is stepping down from the board of the Netherlands Association of Universities of Applied Sciences. The reason: the universities of applied sciences aren’t managing to reach an agreement about support for those amongst them located in areas facing depopulation, including Saxion.
