In his letter to the House of Representatives about the gargantuan workload at universities, Minister of Education Eppo Bruins doesn’t beat around the bush. He cuts the budget that universities are meant to use to reduce the workload. That is obviously “painful”, according to Bruins.

But this doesn’t take away from the duty of the institutions to do something about that workload. What’s more, they should have done so already. In 2020, universities already presented measures to reduce the workload, but not all of those have been introduced, Bruins observes. “I think that universities should hurry up and turn words into deeds.”

Labour Authority

He calls it “worrying” that the workload reductions aren’t progressing much, as the Labour Authority found in May. Employees still have too many tasks and are working too much overtime. In addition, there are regular cases of discrimination, academic-related undesirable behaviour and other forms of social unsafety.

Bruins points out to universities that they might have to be more “selective” in appointing PhD candidates. The pressure on these starting scientists is high, because they often experience long-term uncertainty about a job at the university. Bruins made clear nothing will change as far as the latter is concerned, so he calls upon universities to prepare their PhD candidates for a career outside academia.

Universities should also scrutinise their overhead. Perhaps the regulatory burden can be reduced? And he warns: if the Labour Authority doesn’t see any significant improvement next year, it will start “enforcing”.

Pressure on money

One reason why the workload of scientists is so high is because they spend a lot of time trying to secure research funding, with the chances of success being relatively small. Universities should do something about that as well, says Bruins in another letter, about the distribution of research money, which was sent to the House at the same time.

In this letter, he again refers to the 2020 plans of the universities: at the time, they promised to make sure fewer people would apply for grants, so the chances of getting money would increase. This is another plan that, in the opinion of Bruins, hasn’t sufficiently materialised.

In the years ahead, the education minister will make considerable cutbacks in higher education, maxing out at a billion euros per year. Universities are afraid this will only increase the workload.