Dijkgraaf: 'No hard agreements with universities about permanent contracts'
Education minister Robbert Dijkgraaf released 300 million euros last week, among other things to help university lecturers with a permanent contract. He will not make firm agreements to combat the high share of flexible contracts in university education – also in other positions. The AOb want those appointments.
Image: Martijn Beekman (OCW)
It remains special, a world-renowned physicist who enters politics. From mathematical models that describe the smallest particles to the messy reality of The Hague. “I have lived in science, but I now look at it from a bird's eye view,” says Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf of Education, Culture and Science. “I have to deal with many more parties, such as my colleagues in the cabinet, other ministries and the House of Representatives.”
You just got a new course mapped out for higher education and research, and billions of euros distributed. How did you make those decisions?
“There was also a certain budget available for that policy, about a billion a year, and there were all kinds of reports and wishes. So go have conversations and get ideas. I always say: as a minister you are in the least comfortable position: you experience all the forces and opposing forces, and that is good.”
Particularly striking is the 300 million euros per year in working capital for researchers, half of which is for university lecturers who receive a permanent contract.
“It is an incentive for universities to offer young lecturers (usually aged 30 to 40; ed.) permanent positions. We want more peace and space for lecturers who have little or no research time at all. And in this way we can also relieve the workload.”
But aren't it mainly postdocs who get one temporary contract after another?
“These postdocs would like a permanent contract, and that is possible if they become university lecturers. So there should also be more university teachers.”
Wouldn't it be better to 'demand' permanent jobs instead of 'incentivize' them?
Dijkgraaf smiles. “We will also provide more permanent contracts through the sector plans.” He also allocates 200 million euros a year for the 'sector plans' in all kinds of disciplines. The universities make agreements about teaching and research within disciplines such as the humanities or natural sciences, in order to avoid overlap and complement each other.
How do these sector plans lead to more permanent jobs?
“We are going to make administrative agreements about this with the universities and we are going to monitor it very precisely. We want to involve the groups that have pointed out to us the need for permanent contracts.”
There will be no hard numbers in the agreements
But you are not going to use target figures?
“We will expressly state our wish. There will be no hard figures in the agreements, but we will ask a committee to supervise.”
You recently said that universities and colleges should actually function as one institution. What do you mean?
“We have come a long way with that in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is really surprisingly good at working together. We easily involve colleagues in our work. In America it is different. There I saw that institutions were sometimes a few kilometers apart and started to compete with each other on the same subject. Thanks to our good cooperation, we can compete well with other countries. There is no field of science that we cannot keep up with. But not everyone can do everything. You don't all have to keep all the plates in the air, so make agreements about that."
Can you give an example of courses or departments that are currently located in too many places?
“No, I'm not going to say that now. But I myself have seen how sector plans in physics and chemistry have helped. It gives freedom to a university to do more in one area – let's say organic chemistry – and leave another subject to another university.”
HBO has a key position
Universities attract too many students, universities of applied sciences are faced with shrinkage in the region. Can't universities of applied sciences provide university education in the shrinking regions?
“After the summer I will start exploring: what exactly is the role of each type of education? HBO occupies a key position, because of the close connection with the labor market and the depth that the courses offer.”
Is a new university in a shrinking region an option? In the past, colleges have also become universities.
“The universities of applied sciences now receive 100 million euros per year to develop practice-oriented research. The aim is to further develop higher professional education research and to make education more innovative. That is why we are starting, for example, with the professional doctorate in HBO (the HBO variant of the scientific promotion; ed.).”
There are many barriers in intermediate vocational education and higher education
What options will you explore after the summer?
“There are many dividing walls in MBO and higher education. Can we take some of them out and take the paths of individual students as a starting point? I want to look at that. In any case, I think that we should see MBO, HBO and WO as a fan, and not create a hierarchy. I myself also switched from scientific education to higher professional education when I went to the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. That was not a step down, but a step aside.”
Students complain about stress and pressure to perform. For that reason, your predecessor wanted to limit the binding study advice. What do you want to do?
“We are going to see whether we can move the binding study advice to the second year, so that students have more time. That seems sensible to me. I am shocked by the pressure to perform, the mental problems, the stress and the insecurity that students experience, about which they tell me in conversations. We have to be careful, as a society we cannot put unlimited pressure on our students.”
Where do you think that pressure comes from?
“We have an education system that is unique in the world: it is accessible and it is of high quality. I sometimes thought: why doesn't the whole world do what we do? But there is overpressure, with lecturers who no longer have time for their research and students who have to finish their education as soon as possible. Part of it is peer pressure. Society puts pressure on you and it gets into your own head and eventually you drive yourself crazy. It's also my job to say: can things calm down a bit? In my plans, it is also about the well-being of students: that must be given higher priority.”
Ministers 'call up' and 'encourage' so often.
“The institutions are autonomous and you have to create things from the bottom up, but in my policy I certainly take responsibility at the national level. Take knowledge security, for example: it is very unwise for every research group to reinvent the wheel itself. We need to have some kind of national dike monitoring.”
You recently withdrew the law that gives universities more control over the influx of foreign students.
“The same applies to that. I can stuff the toolbox and then every farmer can maintain his own piece of the dike, but the dike is not yet guarded. We must have a national view on internationalization: what do we all want? That look is still missing. I also talk to the universities about short-term solutions.”
AOb: 'Structural tasks = permanent work'
Next Thursday, the House of Representatives will debate with Minister Dijkgraaf about the distribution of investment in higher education† Douwe van der Zweep, director for higher education at the AOb: “The working conditions for researchers and teachers with a temporary contract constitute an infringement of job security, career prospects and social safety. It also contributes to a sky-high workload in the form of unpaid structural overtime. The AOb also believes that it is the government's responsibility to solve these problems by allocating the investments to the correct destination and, if necessary, by enforcing them. This requires an explicit link between research and education.
Start-up grants and incentive grants that are temporarily awarded to certain categories of scientists mean that scientists only focus on research and do (almost) no teaching tasks. Structural teaching tasks are then permanently fulfilled by universities with temporary employment contracts. This development must be stopped. It is not only in conflict with European regulations on employment contracts, but also with the basic principles of good employment practices: structural tasks = permanent work.”
Check the letter that the AOb sent to the education spokespersons in the House of Representatives.
