This is the week of action. Protests, demonstrations, teach-ins all aimed at fighting back against Rutte's budget cuts.This is also the week that the Knowledge and Information "Snapshot" Report revealed the dilapidated state of the Dutch knowledge economy. Both the current and former government and parliaments have expressed the ambition to be one of the top five most innovative countries, and yet, budgets are being slashed, a projected 2500 professors and lecturers will be fired, university buildings sold off and high university fees being introduced. According to the Snapshot report, the Dutch knowledge economy is not doing well.
Here are a few of their conclusions:
Government investment in
educational institutions too low:
4.22% GNP (down from 2010 and expected to fall even more in the future. The goal of 5.18% by 2020 will not be met if trend continues).
(Difficult) vacancies in educational institutions:
Vacancy intensity (number of vacancies as a percentage of the number of employed people) is at 0,2% for the higher education sector. On the other hand, 72% of the vacancies in the higher education sector are considered difficult to fill.
Poor quality and accessibility of higher education:
The Snapshot report gave this sector a red mark, indicating that the aims set in order to become a strong knowledge economy will not be met if the trend continues.
Two worrisome facts:
- Only 23.1% of Dutch graduates in 2007-2008 studied abroad. This is one thrid less than the target percentage. Moreover, the number of students going abroad stagnated;
- Only 7.4% of the total higher education population in the Netherlands are students from
abroad. This is one quarter less than the target percentage. Here, also, we see a stagnation in the number of international students studying in the Netherlands.
The Dutch national statistics bureau calculated that the Netherlands spent 0.88% GDP on research and development in 2009. The EU average for that year was 1,25% GDP.
Visible effects
The consequence of the failing of the Dutch knowledge economy is visible to students in the Netherlands and to those who work in the educational sector.
Class sizes are being increased, university buildings are being sold off and both students and teachers will be left with less room in which to study and research. The Utrecht University law department will likely not finance any PhD students this year. Support staff and teachers are being fired and - if the government gets its way - students will be expected to borrow even more money for their educations and will be faced with financial penalties for not graduating on time. This is in addition to the depressed job market that those students encounter after graduation.
Why you should do something and what that something might beIn hard economic times, households must tighten their belts. Less nights out on the town, more Raman noodles ... you know the drill. As they say here, "er moet bezuinigd worden": cuts must be made. But does the same go for the government? No! The intuitive "wisdom" that cuts must be made is anything but wise when it comes to government spending in a recession. It is time to stop swallowing this
standard line and time to
understand what is actually going on.
When the economy is hurting, the government has a unique ability to prevent the market from crashing too far. Simply by investing a little more in the public sector, the government can compensate for the lost jobs in the private sector. Moreover, by investing in education, the government can ensure that it will have the highly skilled workers a country needs to have a stable, productive economy that can weather tough economic times. Organizations like the EU and the OECD recognize that such investments are
"pro-growth, anti-crisis investments. ... Research and innovation investments will speed up economic recovery, create jobs and improve European competitiveness"(European Commission (2010): "Europe 2020, a strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth").
And some countries, unlike the Netherlands, are actually acting according to this fact: Germany, France, Denmark , Finland, Brazil and China have increased investments in research and development and higher education since the crisis (Germany increased their investment in education and research to 10% of the GDP and has an education budget of 102.8 billion euro. France has set aside 60 billion euro for knowledge investment. See page 10 of the Snapshot report).
Finally, it is vital that education remains accessible for students from all socioeconomic backgrounds. Taking out large loans with high interest rates cripples students for a large part of their live, making them unable to take on truly innovative challenges such as starting their own business or investing time in designing and inventing. Volunteer work and community involvement also become more difficult. Although this seems far from what is being proposed, the experiences in the US and UK have shown that students are a easy group to target, and once the cuts start coming, they rarely stop.
So what is there to do? The first step is to make your voice heard! Make it known how important it is that your tax dollars go to education (instead of, for example, more fighter jets or another mission to Afghanistan). Tomorrow is a national demonstration in The Hague on behalf of all those concerned about the divestment in knowledge, innovation and education. Let's glean some inspiration from the passion of the students in the UK. Despite disturbingly disproportionate police violence, the UK youth got out to protest the pillaging of their education.
We will be there tomorrow and hope you will be too!
UPDATED
Protest Knowledge Crisis (Kenniscrisis)
Time: 13:00-15:00
Date: Friday, January 21 2011
Place: The Malieveld, The Hague
For more info about the demonstration, check out the facebook page.
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Interesting article! I wonder, though, if blindly investing in education is sufficient. Just throwing more money at the problem seems wasteful. The bigger question for me is: *what* should the government choose to invest in?
ReplyDeleteWe need to re-think higher education and our ambitions we have with it. If you want innovation, excellence and knowledge growth, you may just find that the Dutch model of access for all necessarily results in an average quality of education. And this is not the only reason that we are behind.
Look at the graph of the KIA. Almost all topics related to public-private cooperation are red. We are wasting massive opportunities there. Business is a natural source of innovation and universities should have more opportunity to work together with it.
I think that the discussion should be much more focused on the question HOW to spend than on WHAT to spend on and HOW MUCH to spend. Let's see the crisis as an opportunity to make universities more efficient and innovative, a way to make it sustainable for the future. This does not preclude more government investment, indeed, it may be necessary, but there are more factors than just money to explain our lagging position as a knowledge economy.
Having said that, good luck today, I hope we all reflect on our investments in higher education thanks to your protests.
best, Emiel
Hi Emiel,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment and interesting thoughts!
Indeed, blind investment would probably not do much good. It is important that the money goes to where it is needed most - the least wealthy students and the disciplines that get the least amount of outside funding. However, it is also essential for the government to provide some stability to the research sector in times when outside investment is not so popular (like in times of crisis) and when many families are having trouble paying for their children's education (also, times of crisis). This seems to me to mean that the government should be investing more in crisis times and possibly could consider investing less when more money is to be found in the private sector and when more families are making a good amount of money.
I think another point that needs emphasizing is the lack of jobs available to recent graduates. This compounds the problem of higher education fees and makes students even more desperate and angry. For many of my fellow students it is not uncommon to have done a year's worth of unpaid internships before even being considered for a job ... and then still having to wait for 6 months before finding anything. The fact that jobs in higher education are virtually non-existent (see the low vacancy intensity reported by the KIA) makes it particularly hard for many highly educated people to find a place. Lets be honest - there is not a whole lot one can do with a bachelors and masters in history besides teach and research. And to me, cutting history programs from universities does not seem like an option that would be beneficial in the long run, at least not if one aims for a well-informed and just society.
I agree with you both. And reading this makes me realize that when contrasting points of view it is important to keep the emphasis on the fact that Rutte's plans are simply too destructive. There is nothing constructive about them apart from implementing a indiscriminatory system of discipline. High education should be for mature people. People who know what they want and why academic knowledge is important. Now too many go to university with no prospect or real idea of what they want for the future: simply because that is the next step. Therefore, it seems to me that indeed it is not just about investment or cuts but about a deeper understanding of our society and the coming generations who will make use if the system we create now. On the other hand, am one if these students who knows what she wants, has finished the uni but can't get a job. Why? I either do not have the experience or skills they require; most cultural organizations are looking for managers and heads (as if they couldn't start learning to work horizontally). I feel yes I do need experience but u have very innovative ideas and concepts that can be applied on a more pragmatic level, yet I don't get the chance. Looking for a job outside my sector has not brought many results either. Most jibs are commercial jobs, sells, callcenters, and so on. I speak Dutch but I have a Spanish accent so they don't hire me because of that even though am perfectly uderstandable. I think the actual state of politics, policy and economics is creating a huge unbalance everywhere. And it really seems to stagnated. We need a real change and this is not going to be provided by politicians unless we start to show them what kind of society we want. So it is we who should have the vision as opposed to keep on accomodating ours to theirs and vote for the one who suit you best. Even though we know that none of them provide a Real Alternatief!
ReplyDeleteVery well put!
ReplyDeleteThese protests are about a lot more than the current proposed rise in tuition.
These protests are also about the crisis. About how un-transparent financial and political transactions by old rich White men like those running our government have caused a crisis and made our job prospects terrible. Then they decide, without any input from anyone representing us that we are to be the ones who will suffer the pain from the crisis.
The right-wing complains about taxes and supposedly lazy students and young people. Yet, in every developed country the only major transfer of wealth is from young workers to old people.
There are laws against age discrimination, but they explicitly only apply when refusing to hire older people. There is unemployment insurance when one becomes unemployed. It is based on how long one was worked. But what about filling that between graduation and the first full-time paid job? This is especially important now with high unemployment, longer gaps between graduation and employment, the proliferation of flex work, part-time work, and unpaid internships.
Young people today are expected to do multiple free internships after taking on massive student debt. If a place does an internship without any chance at a job behind it, that should attacked as a violation of labor laws.
There are hundreds of old professors running the universities making $100K+ each. Yet, fleets of young people regularly fill in their teaching responsibilities in violation of their contract limits. Further, these older professors often speak poor English, yet they publish in English, which means that unpaid or lowly paid student assistants and young workers are doing most of the research, editing, and translating, without any credit. It is about respect.