“We have to keep investing even in difficult times”

An interview on the budget cuts, with vice-president of the Executive Board Patrick Groothuis

Are we going to cut strategic resources or intervene more severely in the departments? These are questions the university is asking itself in times of budget cuts. One way or another, TU/e can’t spend more money than it earns. And you must continue to highlight the impact this has, says vice-president of the Executive Board Patrick Groothuis in an interview with Cursor. “You can’t make such heavy cutbacks without it affecting someone.”

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photo Freekje Groenemans Fotografie

According to a recent financial update from the university, TU/e ​​has been struggling with an annual budget deficit for years. There’s a structural deficit of 27 million euros. As TU/e ​​wants to continue investing in lab space, education, and research at the same time, an additional amount of 24 million will be added to that, plus a cutback of approximately 10 million euros imposed by the government. In other words, there’s a deficit of approximately 60 million euros, which will have to be addressed somehow.

All services and departments will have to face this challenge together. The services will have to cut back a total of 12 million euros, the departments 12.8 million. In addition, some strategic investments will be reconsidered, international students from outside the European Economic Area (EEA) will have to pay more tuition fees, and the university only wants to grow in terms of student numbers in master’s programs at the Beethoven departments (Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Applied Physics & Science Education, and Mathematics & Computer Science).

And then there are the cuts from The Hague. Some of these are already clear, but some aren’t. The university has responded by making a professional assessment, says Groothuis. “You have to remain alert at all times and try to stay calm above all. That’s also our role.”

Although both the services and departments need to make cuts, the way in which they have to go about it is different. The services will all cut 2 percent per year over a four-year period, the departments won’t. Why is that?

“The 2 percent target for the services is there and isn’t going anywhere. Of the required 12 million euros, 10.5 million has already been earmarked in the budgets of the services. Proposals for the rest are now going through the decision-making process. Originally, the departments also had to cut back two percent per year, but then the cut of 9.5 million from the starter and incentive grants was added to that. We looked each other in the eye and said: we don’t want this, the impact will be too great. The first two percent have been cut by all the departments, but for the rest the question is now on the table: can we find alternatives?”

To this end, TU/e is looking at strategic resources and reconsidering investments worth 9 million euros. Which projects or initiatives does this concern?

“We went through a joint process with all deans. We decided that we must continue to invest, even in difficult times. That is the basic philosophy. But which investments are really important and should be continued? And how are we going to pay for them? These are the same questions that people will also have at home.

We then had an 'away day' with all the deans and said: we cannot spend more money than we have. If we want to prevent more drastic intervention in the departments, you have to make choices in the current strategic expenditure. It is one or the other. So we analyzed the strategic expenditure, identifying 9 million euros worth of expenses. We’re now looking into whether the impact of cutting these will be acceptable.

Which ones? I can’t give full disclosure on this yet. But real estate, for example, is the second-largest expense for TU/e, ​​after personnel. We can cut 1 to 2 million in costs annually on real estate. We also see that office occupancy is low. The average desk is occupied 23 to 30 percent of the time. Employees have meetings, teach, work in the lab. And of course everyone has holidays and leaves of absence. Do we want to stick to the system where everyone has their own workstation? We can choose to do that, but that will be at the expense of something else. If we want to invest in a good lab infrastructure, and we do, then we’ll have to reduce office space. What we’re doing on floors 10 and 11 of Atlas we’ll also start doing more at the departments.

With the ‘Transformus’ project, we are now visiting all buildings to consult with all units about how we can offer better quality while using less space. Implementation is already underway in certain parts of the buildings. We had anticipated 25 million in investments in this area, but perhaps 20 million will suffice. By reducing investments, the annual depreciation and, by extension, overall cost will decrease.”

In the context of the cutbacks, the university isn’t just looking at its own budget, but also at external funding. What’s going on there?

“If you grow thanks to research projects, that’s fantastic. The downside of this success, however, is that you need more lab space and more workspace for PhD candidates. But there’s often no financial coverage for that in research grants. There is in contract research, but we don’t always use those funds for their intended purpose. You create extra research, which is great, but this also leads to extra central costs, and we don’t get reimbursed for those. So TU/e ​​is actually running out of money because of this. By integrating those extra costs in projects, we can solve that problem to some extent. We can create around 6 million in extra revenue this way.

But we also have to look critically at how we’re using the amount we receive. With a growth fund, for example, you get an integral cost price reimbursement, which also includes some housing. Which means you have to use it for housing and not to appoint extra PhD students. There’s currently a project underway to see how we can deal with these kinds of things in a sensible manner.”

TU/e is taking four years to restore balance to the revenues and expenses. How is the Executive Board planning to phase the budget cuts?

“Some measures won’t have an effect right away. Consider the raised tuition fees for international students. The tuition fee that TU/e ​​was charging didn’t cover the costs and it was also much lower than at other universities. That’s why the tuition fee for bachelor’s students will go from 13,300 euros to 18,000 euros. That’s a competitive fee that better covers the costs. The tuition fee for master’s students will go from 19,300 euros to 21,000 euros. These new amounts only apply to new students, so from 1 September 2025 on. The financial consequences will therefore be greater year after year.”

We are still growing in terms of enrolled bachelor’s students, which isn’t really what we want.

Won’t the raised tuition fees for international students have a negative effect on recruitment?

“They might, but this fits our strategy. If this measure results in slightly fewer non-EER students, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. We have many bachelor’s students compared to the number of master’s students. TU Delft has a better balance in that regard. We are still growing in terms of enrolled bachelor’s students, which isn’t really what we want. We want growth for our master’s programs. This also has an affect on the research that you can do. We want to be a research university.”

The aim of the Beethoven Project is to have 2,000 additional master students graduate in the area of chips. Some of them will have to come from abroad. In an update on the financial situation, TU/e ​​states that it is optimistic about this. What is this optimism based on?

“If you look at the internationalization issue, we’re in a region where Beethoven resources are made available to attract extra international talent. It wouldn’t be reasonable to simultaneously say: just cut the same amount as everyone else to contribute to the overall curbing of internationalization. We are of the opinion that technology, certainly in this region, is a shortage sector. In other words, even though internationalization has to be brought down nationwide, things are fundamentally different in this region.”

Before, there was talk of doubling the number of chip researchers from 700 to 1,400. Is that still the case?

“The ambition is to hire 147 new scientists in that field, who are to supervise four hundred to five hundred PhD candidates. That makes for a total of almost seven hundred researchers. This will give a huge boost to semicon-related research and education.”
 

Speaking of Beethoven: not all departments are involved in this. Does that have any consequences for how the budget cut burden is divvied up?

“Indeed, we see that there’s a difference between departments. This is a conscious choice. We have departments that are central to our growth strategy and other ones that are good as they are in terms of size. Both are facing complex challenges. It’s difficult to simultaneously grow and make cuts, but just making cuts is also difficult. How do we go about all this, as one university?

We have a financial model and you cannot change that overnight. That is why we have created a solidarity fund of 5 million euros for the departments. The Executive Board can allocate money from that fund to departments that are struggling with certain developments. That money is intended to temporarily solve problems, but there must also be a plan to structurally solve them.”

Is that fund mainly intended for departments that don’t fall under the Beethoven Project?

“No, it’s basically for all departments. The Beethoven departments are also facing challenges at the moment, so we help out there as well.”

In the Strategy Update, it says the new cleanroom is a go. Will the Campus Strategy 2030 stay intact? Or is it conceivable that other new construction or renovation projects will be delayed or canceled?

“Yes, one should always keep that option open. As far as the big projects are concerned, we’re now putting the last pieces of the puzzle together. We will have to renovate Gemini Zuid. If the Beethoven Project goes ahead, we’ll need a new lab building. So the cleanroom and the lab building will go ahead no matter what. We’ll make a decision about the rest at the end of this year. We’re being very deliberate about all of this, because we have to get it exactly right.”

What conditions is the ministry attaching to the payment of the ‘Beethoven money’?

“You’ll be the first to know when I do. We’ll discuss it soon. Will it be a kind of subsidy-like accountability? Will we get the money based on performance or on effort? All of this makes quite a difference. The funding body wants to have a grip on the flow of money, which is understandable. We would like to have as little administrative burden as possible. The government certainly has a real responsibility in these times to keep the administrative burden, bureaucracy, and red tape to a minimum. A large portion of the cutbacks would be superfluous if we could eliminate administrative burdens. Half of our Finance & Control unit is working on accountability. If you’re talking about how to best use money for the Netherlands, then that’s an area where we can do better. The ministry must dare to give us its trust.”

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