By Maria van Wijnen
Last Monday, 25 November, around twenty thousand students, teachers, administrators, and other passionate demonstrators took to Malieveld, in the Hague, to protest budget cuts to higher education. In true Dutch fashion, protestors brought umbrellas and stood in the rain for over two hours while listening to speeches, engaging in chants, and holding up banners. Signs displayed messages such as “Invest in The Future” and “More Books, Less Bombs.” Among the attendees were various AUC Students and Lecturers. Yara Schmidt, Dutch third-year Social Science student, was “happy to run into so many AUC students and professors” while at the protest.
The cuts, part of the coalition agreement presented in May 2024, include limiting the number of international students, increasing tuition fees for non-EU students, restricting EU student grants, and reintroducing penalties for delayed graduation. Science funding also faces deep reductions, with €1.1 billion from research funds, and €6.8 billion from the National Growth Fund over the next decade. While the government defends these measures as cost-saving, protestors questioned why funding for education and innovation is slashed while money is increasingly allocated for weaponry and fossil fuel subsidies.
Initially scheduled for 14 November in Utrecht, the protest was canceled and rescheduled. According to the NL Times, Utrecht Mayor Sharon Dijksma said she “recently received concrete information from outside the city, which show[ed] that a pro-Palestine organisation intend[ed] to hijack the demonstration.” Nonetheless, Emmy van Ingen, Dutch second-year Social Science student, went to Utrecht, and said despite the official cancellation it turned out to be “a very peaceful protest” with “more people than expected.” Marina Goutet, French/Italian third-year Social Science major, also attended both protests, saying the unofficial demonstration felt more “student-run” and combined the fight for Palestinian rights with the fight against budget cuts. At the Malieveld protest, some speakers also alluded to the previous cancellation stating that they stand with Palestinian liberation and the right to demonstrate.
The protest drew a diverse crowd, from teenage students to senior academics, underscoring broad support. Various institutions, including Maastricht and Leiden University, even arranged transportation for students and faculty to attend the protest. Others crowded into NS trains headed towards the Hague, coming from all corners of the country. Speakers joked that even people from Zeeland had come, around a three-hour trip with public transport.
Key themes of the recent protest included the right to education regardless of socioeconomic status. Van Ingen worries that the budget cuts disproportionately target people of low-income backgrounds making it harder for them to get an education which “is not something that we should want as a society, as a country.”
Although many attendees were Dutch, speakers also expressed solidarity with international students and teachers. Dr. Ross Kang, AUC Mathematics professor, who attended the recent protest, says “As a foreign national here, it was hard not to notice how the tone of politics shifted sharply recently, especially the resentment against internationalization and immigration.” In spite of a growing xenophobic political climate, Dutch speakers at the protest explicitly stated that they stand with the international community of the Netherlands.
Many AUC students notice the effects of budget cuts on the curriculum as various classes are being removed from the offered scope. Goutet says she is already seeing “classes be canceled and teachers be slowly kicked out” and national education cuts will worsen the issue.
However, as Schmidt, explains, the issue goes “way beyond our management” and AUC as it threatens the entire Dutch higher education system. Schmidt further urges AUC students to “sign all the petitions that you can find that are against the budget cuts of our government” to at least mitigate the consequences.
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