The bizarre new war on English
The Dutch government wants universities and students to pay the price for systemic failures
Last week, the Minister of Education proposed a bill which would force universities in the Netherlands to teach courses in Dutch.
Universities would be required to provide two-thirds of bachelor’s degree content in Dutch, teach students basic Dutch, and limit the number students from outside the EU. English would be allowed as an exception, for example: “if you want to attract the best violinists in the world, it might help to offer this education in English.”
This strikes me as a very odd idea. Considering that the Netherlands has the highest level of English proficiency in Europe. And that it bends over backwards to lure international companies (especially post-Brexit). And international workers (the 30% ruling.) And is a world-wide academic leader in the sciences. And deliberately cultivates itself as Kennisland (a knowledge country) since it lacks, say, things like natural resources and cheap labor to otherwise compete in the global marketplace.
Minister of Education Robbert Dijkgraaf has said the main concerns driving his bill are the overcrowding in Dutch universities, increased workload on lecturers, the housing crisis, and access to education for Dutch students.
These are serious problems.
But I think what’s really going on behind this sudden “war on English” is a misguided scapegoating of internationals and universities in response to yet another failure of Rutte-era austerity.
Mark Rutte has been Prime Minister of the Netherlands since 2010 , and his successive cabinets have slashed funding for many social services—including public assistance and social housing, which I have written about recently—and higher education.
Why so many international students?
The Netherlands has 122,287 international students enrolled in higher education in 2022-23, which makes up 15 percent of all students—a 3.5 percent increase from 2005. Now 40 percent of first-year students come from abroad, compared to 28 percent in 2015.
Students like coming here because Dutch universities provide high-quality education (Utrecht University, the University of Groningen, and Erasmus University Rotterdam are ranked in the top 100 universities in the world), because higher education in the Netherlands is relatively cheap… and because much of Dutch higher education is taught in English—one quarter of bachelor programs and three-quarters of masters programs.
Why do Dutch universities teach in English?
Dutch universities are funded based on enrollment and how many students they graduate. The more students, the more funding. With funding slashed year after year it became impossible for Dutch students alone to make the ends meet for universities.
So universities did what they were incentivized to do, even though over-crowding has been a problem for years: they transitioned to English and enrolled more students from abroad.
Dijkgraaf points to overcrowded lecture halls and overworked lecturers as a reason to cap international students, but these conditions are exactly what the Dutch system has been—inadvertently or not—designed for.
The housing crisis strikes students
There is currently a shortage of 26,500 student living quarters. Last summer, many Dutch universities went to the extent of telling accepted students not to come and begin their fall semester unless they had already found housing.
If they came to the Netherlands anyway, they would “most likely have to stay in hotels or hostels for a longer period of time, if there is still room.”
“It is essential that you can start the academic year and foreign adventure without the stress of becoming homeless,” wrote the University of Amsterdam to accepted students. “If you cannot find a place to live, we urgently advise you to adjust your study plans.”
One German student bound for the Artificial Intelligence program in Groningen told the Telegraaf that he placed dozens of messages and calls to room landlords, and ultimately promised 200 euros to anyone who found him an apartment.
“I’m even considering sleeping in a tent, but I don't know if I'll be able to study.”
Princeton, New Jersey, USA
The craziest thing about this story: Minister of Education Robert Dijkgraaf was the director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University from 2012 to 2022, and an academic before that.
Dijkgraaf’s field of research covers string theory, quantum gravity and other subjects at the intersection of mathematics and particle physics. In string theory, two mathematical concepts are co-named after him: with Edward Witten the Dijkgraaf-Witten invariants and with Erik and Herman Verlinde the Witten-Dijkgraaf-Verlinde-Verlinde equations.
This man left the US last year and has seriously benefited from an international education, and obviously speaking a shitload of English.
He’s also a member of D66, the “education party.”
How is this the man who wants to take a hammer to English at universities?!
He has said about his proposal:
The current law says ‘Dutch by default,’ but there’s a huge hole in the net and everyone swims through it. So we have to formulate the exceptions precisely.
It’s as if he sees the internationalization of universities as a matter of rule-breaking—tighten the rules and the problems will stop. But English-language instruction is not the problem.
Dijkgraaf’s simple law takes aim at the consequences that the system has wrought, rather than tackling underlying conditions which created the problem—incrementally over the course of the last twenty years.
But society doesn’t conform to the laws of mathematics, doctor!
Complex problems require complex solutions, like these that Rem Korteweg of the Clingendael Institute laid out on Twitter: investing in the quality of education, not the quantity of students; introducing tougher merit-based admission criteria; having students pledge to stay for a couple of years after their studies end; and building more student houses.
🥳 Leuke Dingetjes
The Dutch Stonehenge
Last week archaeologists announced the discovery of a 4,000-year-old religious sanctuary on an industrial site in the town of Tiel, close to Arnhem. Digging started in 2017.
The main mound is about 20 meters in diameter and contained the remains of 60 men, women and children, and also served as a solar calendar. The sun shone directly through passages on the mound during the winter and summer solstices.
This is the first time this sort of discovery has been made in the Netherlands.
Captain’s Log: Amsterdam, 2023
This Twitter thread about cycling in Amsterdam went viral last week. To a local reads like a Victorian-era anthropologist reporting his findings on your own savage tribe, but I also found it a little heartwarming. It reminded me of how pleasant and free cycling culture is here compared to some other places I have lived, namely the most savage transportation city in the USA, Los Angeles.
British five-year-olds are on average seven centimetres shorter than their Dutch counterparts in 'startling' development
I ripped that headline straight from the Daily Mail.
Experts explained that “height is a clear indicator of living conditions” and that the nutritional deficiencies of a poor diet are to blame.
A new remix EP from De Toegift
One of my fav Dutch bands De Toegift released a new EP of reworks of tracks from their excellent self-titled LP from earlier this year. The EP is “like a party slowly coming to an end,” according to the band.
*all typos in this email are definitely deliberate
This is upsetting and silly!
Excellent article, Kate!