The additional emergency funding is designated for the nearly 800 students who were already studying in the Netherlands before the war started. Institutions in MBO and higher education currently lack sufficient means to help their Ukrainian students.

Not sufficient

Shortly after the war broke out, Minister Dijkgraaf called on universities and universities of applied sciences to help current Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian students and support them if they had acute money problems. He made 1 million euros available, but this turned out not to be sufficient. The additional 2.3 million euros on top of that initial amount is “for the time being” intended to cover the period from March through May.

A spokesperson for the Minister announced that institutions have to make their own estimates of how much support individual students need. “They are obviously in the best position to judge this.”

Protected status

Furthermore, it has been decided that the group of Ukrainian refugees – both current and future students – will receive temporary protected resident status. Current students will also keep their student visas.

It is still unclear whether these students will also be able to pay regular tuition fees and whether they will be eligible for student grants. Right now they are seen as non-European students and have to pay sky-high tuition fees.