The basic grant for Dutch students was abolished in 2015, and that should make millions of euros available in the coming years to be spent on improving the quality of higher education. In order to get access to these resources, research universities and applied sciences universities have to submit a plan.

Between 25 and 27 November, TU/e will be visited by an NVAO committee for the second time in two months. The audit will cover specific areas of focus and has to result in a positive institutional audit decision. During this visit, the committee will also consider the eight education projects on which TU/e proposes to spend the student loan recourses, says head of education policy Lilian Halsema.

Halsema: “These include our program for innovative education projects, the so-called BOOST program, our plan for challenge-based learning, and the deployment of teacher assistants. The total costs associated with these plans in the period up to 2024 are approximately nine million euros. We expect to be informed about the final decision somewhere in February 2020 and obviously hope for a positive assessment.”

Not approved

At this time, three institutions submitted a plan that was not approved and were given a second chance. The minister didn’t find their plans clear enough. Quality assurance agency NVAO, which advises the minister, already rejected the plans of seven other institutions at an earlier stage. But the minister has not made a decision yet. Everything is detailed in a letter she sent to the House op Representatives today. The ten universities whose plans met with approval also include three theological universities and the Open University. Only six ‘regular’ universities managed to pass the assessment: less than half.

Back in June already, when 23 educational institutions were evaluated negatively, NVAO chairman Anne Flierman stated that the results were disappointing. “That’s more than we expected, I want to be honest about that.”

The plans will only be of crucial importance for the allocation of funds as of 2021. In 2019 and 2020, the student loan resources will be distributed proportionally between the educational institutions, together with the rest of their government funding. It was too early to make any ‘concrete quality agreements’ for this period.

National projects

The educational institutions, including TU/e, still have a few months to ensure that their plans will be assessed positively. All plans will have been reviewed by April 2020 at the latest.

The minister, incidentally, uses ten percent of the recourses for a variety of national projects, such as educational innovation, equal opportunity campaign Students4Students, and regional collaboration between vocational education and secondary education on the one hand, and research universities and universities of applied sciences on the other.

The student loan resources are already marginally lower as a result of the cabinet’s cutbacks. In the distant future, higher education may have to pay the price for the fact that the high student loan interest rate has been scrapped.

Source: OCW