Where is our money?

By Nina de Winter
Lijst Calimero is wondering where the money from the abolishment of study financing went. At the time, the Minister of Education and the universities agreed to invest extra money in the quality of education. Unfortunately, current students do not seem to profit from extra investments.

After years of discussion, the Dutch government decided to abolish the basic financial support for students (studiefinanciering) in 2015. Instead, students can now take a loan (studievoorschoot) to finance their studies. However, the government also promised that the money from the basic financial support would not just disappear. Instead they promised to invest funds of an additional €1 bln into education, available from 2018 onwards. Therefore, universities have to make so called pre-investments into education between 2015 and 2018 so that also current students that do not receive any financial support anymore can benefit from the development. Also, the universities’ co-decision should be involved in the process. Since 2016, the University Council has the right to consent on the headlines of the University’s annual budget. In that way, the minister aimed to increase the involvement in the decision-making about the pre-investments1. Unfortunately, the information about the actual pre-investments made is still minimal. Additionally, the decisions about pre-investments are made more complicated by the fact that universities can also label investments planned independently and in advance as pre-investments. In that way, no additional investment is made but investments are simply labelled differently.

In order to have more clarity about the pre-investments at the University of Groningen we requested an explicit summary from the Board of Directors, because the pre-investments are not easily fund in the annual budget of the University. Unfortunately, we did not receive a clear response. The Board of Directors explained that €2 mln are invested into education, €1 mln are invested into education related research, and €2 mln are invested into study facilities, namely the renovations of the University Library. The renovation is an investment that had been on the agenda for a longer time already.

According to the Board of Directors, the pre-investments can partly be found in the investment agenda of the UG. Their implantation is now in the hands of faculties themselves. Faculties especially have to invest into improving the student/staff-ratio. However, recruiting qualified academic staff takes time. That leads to a situation in which current students that do not receive any financial support anymore are in fact the victims as they barely benefit from the ore-investments. We are worried about this development. However, we are not the only ones that worry. A year ago, the ISO (Interstedelijk Studenten Overleg) expressed the same concerns. Also the Dutch Parliament questioned the pre-investments repeatedly and currently research is done by the Court of Audit.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of uncertainty about the promised pre-investments. The promised amount was once as high as €1 bln but currently an amount of €600 mln seems more realistic. We hope that the minister will include the additional and promised funds into the multi-year forecasts in spring. Only then we can find them in the University’s annual budget for 2018. We also hope to get more clarity about investments done in previous years when we receive the annual report for 2016. Lijst Calimero tries to stay ahead of the developments concerning the pre-investments. Current students must be able to benefit from better education in return for not receiving any financial support anymore.