Cabinet: students have to learn Dutch again
Universities and universities of applied sciences must ensure that their students learn to speak and write Dutch properly again, the cabinet believes. There will even be a standard for the 'expression skills' of students.
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That is stated a letter that Minister of Education Van Engelshoven has sent to the Lower House. Dutch is currently not well enough protected as a cultural and scientific language, the minister believes, and she wants to change that.
Not only Dutch students must master their mother tongue, foreign students must also learn Dutch at a level to be determined. That would be good for the bond with the Netherlands.
Dutch is currently not well enough protected as a cultural and scientific language
Reputation
The standard must apparently not become rigid: universities and universities of applied sciences are allowed to contribute ideas. There will be no national exams, because the minister immediately speaks of 'customisation and differentiation in concretizing the standard'.
Nevertheless, the universities are concerned, according to an initial reaction. They see the importance of mastering the Dutch language, they say in an initial response, but they do fear that the minister's intentions could be at the expense of the 'good international reputation of our country, also in international science.'
The universities fear that the plans of the minister could be at the expense of the good international reputation of our country
The universities are also concerned about another intention of the minister: she wants to monitor the language of instruction more closely. In principle, they must be in Dutch, unless there are good reasons to deviate from them (such as the labor market or the usual language of communication in a particular sector). It could be that some programs have to become Dutch-language again, the minister considers.
Workload
Quality watchdog NVAO must monitor enforcement. The universities are fed up with it and fear 'a significant and unnecessary increase in the workload within the universities' if they keep having to explain why they opt for English-taught programmes.
Student organizations ISO and LSVb, on the other hand, are 'happy' that universities and universities of applied sciences will soon have to provide substantive arguments for their internationalisation. 'Internationalization should be about content', it says above their press release.
In one go, the minister wants to get a grip on the enormous influx of foreign students. Their number has doubled in ten years to about 86 thousand students. But how do you limit the number of foreign students without discriminating on origin?
To this end, the minister has made possible a trick that the universities had previously recommended: she makes it possible to apply a numerus fixus (student stop) to the English-language variant of a study program, while everyone remains welcome for the Dutch-language variant. In principle, anyone can start the Dutch-language program, but of course the foreign students will not.
Lawsuit
Ultimately, the number of foreign students should no longer grow unbridled. She therefore also withdraws money from the recruitment agencies for foreign students that the government has set up in some countries.
According to the minister, there is a chance that higher education will 'in time no longer be able to cope with this influx', which would have consequences for the funding of higher education and the accessibility of programs for Dutch students. She does not say that in her letter, but in a press release that her ministry has distributed.
The criticism of the influx of foreign students - and of the Anglicisation of study programs - has been growing for years, especially by the action group Beter Onderwijs Nederland. He even filed a lawsuit against universities to force them into Dutch-language education.
