High turnout expected at Alternative Opening: “Irresponsible to make such extreme cuts”
The Alternative Opening of the Academic Year, a protest against the cuts at universities, will take place on the Domplein in Utrecht this Monday. It will certainly not be the last action this year, announces UvA professor and co-organiser Rens Bod.
This Monday, some of the UvA scientists and students will start the academic year not in the Oude Lutherse Kerk in Amsterdam, but in Utrecht. The Alternative Opening, also known as the True Opening, on Domplein has existed for several years but will be bigger this year because of the huge cuts announced for higher education: more than 1 billion euros a year. That is 15 per cent of the total budget for higher education and amounts to abolishing a university the size of Amsterdam.
Angry and worried
“Staff and students are now angrier and more worried than in previous years,” says UvA professor Rens Bod and initiator of WOinAction, that co-organised the Alternative Opening of the Academic Year since 2019. “Cuts on this scale mean there will be huge gaps in courses and research. Fewer subjects will be offered to students and less research will be done, causing the knowledge economy to falter.”
Ever since the 1980s, Rens Bod has seen cuts in universities every year while the workload increases. This resulted in the action group WOinAction in 2017. The first manifestation on Malieveld attracted two thousand demonstrators. This was followed in 2019 by the Alternative Opening of the Academic Year, which is now a tradition.
WoinAction’s actions were not without success. It led to the report by consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) that concluded that higher education was indeed one and a half billion short of maintaining a healthy balance between education and research. This report was followed by hefty investments in the form of the sector plans, the Science and Research Fund and the National Growth Fund.
With the new outline agreement of our government, those investments have now been reversed. The 1,200 permanent contracts for university teachers that were funded by the sector plans are under pressure, the last two rounds of the National Growth Fund are being scrapped and a large chunk of the annual contribution from the Fund for Science and Research is being cut.
For that reason, quite a few more parties are involved this year. Besides the regular group of unions - FNV, AOb, CNV, Vawo and LSVb - this year, smaller associations such as those for university lecturers, postdocs and PhD students are also taking part. Students are also joining together to protest against the long-term study penalty.
During the opening, several parties will take the floor, including Caspar van den Berg, president of UNL (Universities of the Netherlands) and Rens Bod himself on behalf of WOinAction. Peter Paul Verbeek, rector magnificus of the UvA, announced that he would try to attend. Later that afternoon, he would then travel on to the opening of the academic year at the UvA.
The action group mainly wants to show next Monday that the universities not only need the government, but that the government also needs the universities. Bod: “If you look at Italy, Hungary and, until recently, Poland, you get the impression that radical-right governments have a difficult relationship with universities. While we are actually training the future teachers, doctors and judges. Every euro you put into scientific research, you get back 4-7 times. In the current climate, it is really very unwise to make such extreme cuts in this area.”
Prinsjesdag
Bod is under no illusion that the action will pay off before Prinsjesdag, when the budget is being presented. He has already been told by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science that almost nothing can be changed in the financial sections of the Framework Agreement of the new government.
But neither is it too late. Bod: “The Alternative Opening is certainly not the only action of WOinAction that will take place this year. But you have to build demonstrations slowly, together with the unions. In the Netherlands, we are often only willing to protest when the heat is on. And that is not yet the case: the first round of cuts will take effect from 2025. Only in 2026 will the big blows fall.”
Scottish cuts
Bod also draws hope from an incident at St Andrews University in Scotland. There, staff and administrators decided to strike together against the Scottish government’s planned cuts. The other Scottish universities joined in. Already at the beginning of the academic year, universities announced they would strike in the last two weeks of the academic year so that no students would be able to graduate. “Tension mounted throughout the year and at the last minute, the government gave in anyway. What do we learn from this? It shows that a well-planned, disruptive strike helps. But only if we act together - staff, students and the administrators.”
So the Alternative Opening is only the beginning of a potentially eventful academic year. At the end of the meeting on Domplein, the follow-up action will also be announced. Bod does not want to say much about that yet. “But the follow-up action will be a lot heavier than the Alternative Opening.”
The Alternative Opening of the Academic Year will be on 2 September 2024 between 11:00 - 13:00 at Domplein in Utrecht.
