Universities plan to abolish student grants

An end to student grants, student loans for all students and a higher tuition fee for almost half of the students; the Dutch universities have come up with these plans to face the government cuts in higher education, the Dutch daily Trouw reported last Friday.

The university bosses from the Dutch universities’ association VSNU met in a 5-star hotel in Paris to discuss the matter two weeks ago, the paper says. Not every university agrees with every part of the plan, but ‘on the main issues there’s support for the chosen approach’, the report of the Paris meeting says. Last weekend the university bosses continued their discussions.

The VSNU aims to speed up the plans to counteract the effect of government cuts in higher education the coming years. To achieve this,  the study finance and tuition plans of the universities  go much further than the government plans.

First of all the universities suggest a student loan system for all students instead of just for masters’ students.

In addition, the universities suggest higher fees for students who take more than the official number of years. According to the VSNU this is 44% of all university students.  The universities want to fix the extra fee, which now varies between 5000 and 15.000 euros, for students themselves.

Furthermore, the VSNU plans to freeze student numbers as from 2012.

“Although the plans are not definite, the effect of the message feels like a stab in the back of the student”, says student Union LSVb.

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