Photo Marte Hofsteenge Higher education in the Netherlands and beyond is in turmoil. Due to government budget cuts, many universities are taking drastic austerity measures: ending bachelor or master programs, abolishing departments and firing people. WUR also recently announced austerity measures, which will likely result in the loss of 130-180 jobs. We want to stress that resorting to job losses is awful and we stand in solidarity with those whose jobs are on the line.
However, financial problems are not only due to cuts; they are also the result of how universities are organized. The fall of the cabinet does not change this, even though it may offer some hope that the cuts will be reversed. Over the last decades, universities – and WUR is no exception – have embraced the New Public Management approach, which comes down to adopting private sector principles assuming that this will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of university governance. This has resulted in a corporate university, characterized by a growth of performance measurement, internal competition, invoicing, outsourcing, and business language. For example, the personnel advisor, who used to be the academic’s colleague, has been transformed into the ‘HR business partner’. In turn, the academic has become client or customer and regularly receives a customer satisfaction survey to evaluate the ‘business partner’s’ performance.
The financial problems are also the result of how universities are organized. The fall of the cabinet does not change this
Of course, they are not actual business partners: academics cannot choose between different providers. It is basically a fake façade promoting a non-existing (market) logic. And while in HR this logic is relatively inconsequential, it is not in financial management and control. The market façade here actually forces academics to go along with a pretend logic that directly affects how they behave as colleagues, how they look at their academic work and how they do their job. And this directly jeopardises the core of what the university should be all about: academic freedom.
A recently published report by the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences corroborates this point and raises severe concerns about academic freedom in the Netherlands. According to this report it is crucial that in addition to strategic research there is sufficient financial space for free curiosity-driven research: ‘High dependence on project funding (in the second or third flow of funds) can lead to undesirable restrictions on academic freedom.’
We find this very disconcerting, the more so as we hear little about this in the austerity discussions and plans. In this way, the current budget cuts enacted through the corporate university vastly exacerbate the current challenges to what universities should stand for. There is a real danger that if universities are maintaining their present organization, corporate mindset and language, and add cuts on top of this, we will see a dramatic increase in work pressure and a further erosion of academic freedom.
In practice academic freedom is very much curtailed by treating academic chair groups as business units
At WUR, this curtailing of academic freedom is not because the leaderships do not defend the principle itself – they do. But in practice it is very much curtailed by treating academic chair groups as ‘business units’. It basically turns academics into consultants who must continuously focus on bringing in more money to a) cover the research part of their own salary and even their education, and b) continue to pay for the overhead costs of an enormous bureaucracy that often makes our work more difficult, not easier. We would like to illustrate this with one example. Due to the precarious financial situation, we are pressured to acquire more external funding. Recently, in one of our groups, we were working on the acquisition of EU-funded Marie Curie Training Networks and Postdoctoral Fellowships. Unlike EU Horizon Research & Innovation grants these funding schemes still allow for curiosity-driven research. While they used to be budget-neutral in the past, or even allowed to cover staff time, these schemes now lead to negative financial results due to new WUR rates and higher overhead costs. As a result, we are not allowed or discouraged to continue with these acquisitions. This further restricts the kind of research we can do, and we are effectively being forced to withdraw from long-lasting collaborations.
The narrowing scope of research due to budgetary restraints means that increasingly only those questions get asked that established government, private or other institutions are willing to pay for. More fundamental research questions, especially those that challenge current systems of power and privilege, which are at the root of the problems WUR says it aims to address, rarely get funded. These central contradictions and issues are not explicitly addressed in the announced austerity measures of WUR.
Our plea is to have a fundamental discussion on how we can structurally rethink and repair the university
Hence, our plea is to have a fundamental discussion on how we can structurally rethink and repair the university. Our deepest worry is that the system as it is will stay in place, while myriad cuts are made that will put even more undue pressure on academic and support staff and on academic freedom. So rather than asking us to come up with proposals for budget cuts, let us address and alleviate long-standing core contradictions and issues eroding academia so that WUR, and also other universities, can go back to a focus on being a public institution, centred around its core functions of education, research, and societal engagement based on cooperative principles of trust, collaboration, and public service.
Han Wiskerke, chairholder Rural Sociology
Bram Büscher, chairholder Sociology of Development and Change
Edward Huijbens, leerstoelhouder Cultural Geografy
Rutgerd Boelens, personal professor Water Resources Management
Bas Zwaan, chairholder Laboratory of Genetics
Marc Naguib, chairholder Behavioural Ecology
This is an incredibly important article, thank you to the chair holders for speaking up. In my opinion, to repair our university we must start at the top. This is a public institution that belongs to the public, and to the academics, suport staff and students who work and study here. Yet, WUR’s governance model increasingly resembles a form of feudal corporatism- an unelected, unaccountable executive board (accountable only to an equally faceless ‘supervisory board’) that rules by decree rather than any meaningful democratic participation. An executive board where a finance officer without any academic experience controls the daily lives of academic staff. An executive board who communicates to its minnows through corporate spokespeople. We need to radically reform this system. We deserve a university run by academics and students for academics and students. For example, the rector should be an elected position, who is accountable to an elected university council comprised of academic and support staff, and students.
Without reform, this university and other Dutch universities will continue their slide into corporatization, eroding the vital function of a public university as an independent institution of research and education.
Thanks for putting into words what we unfortunately experience.
Hopefully, this feedback is being taken seriously and will lead to meaningful corrective action, but I doubt it.