Robbert Dijkgraaf, Dutch minister of Science and Education, submitted a proposal to force all Dutch university bachelor programs to teach two-thirds of their courses in the Dutch language. The proposal should become law by 2024. This is an ill-conceived measure which I am surprised sprouted from the brain of a highly intelligent man as Dijkgraaf (whose scientific background, it should be noted, was partially based in the United States, so he is aware of the importance of English for scientific education).
At present there are many Dutch university programs which are taught in English. There are good reasons for that. I will list four:
(1) Most scientific literature is written in English. Thus, fluency in English is already a mandatory requirement for almost all university programs. In the Netherlands, scientific staff therefore either teaches in English or uses a weird mix of English and Dutch. Only a small handful of university programs can rely solely on Dutch.
(2) Considering that teaching jobs in the Netherlands tend to pay much less than industry salaries, it is hard to attract sufficient numbers of university staff if staff members need to be fluent in Dutch. Of course, one can ask staff members who do not speak Dutch to learn that. However, Dutch is quite a hard language to learn, and to gain enough experience with Dutch to be able to speak it fluently, one will usually need several years of training. Students prefer being taught in fluent English over being taught in broken Dutch.
(3) Teaching a program in English allows foreign students to join, which gives all staff and students the opportunity to interact with a large diversity of people and cultures. Moreover, many of these foreign students remain in the Netherlands after graduation, thus adding to the Dutch work force which has troubles finding well-educated people in many professions.
(4) Several programs in the Netherlands would be too small to survive if they would solely rely on Dutch students. This holds in particular for programs in exact sciences, which tend to be unpopular among Dutch students, while these educational programs are often of high importance to keep up with the demands of Dutch industry.
Considering these advantages, one may wonder why the Dutch government wants to enforce the Dutch language on university programs. I have heard the following three arguments:
(1) The decline of the Dutch language is an assault on Dutch culture. “In a few years no one will read Multatuli or W.F. Hermans anymore.” To counteract this argument, I would say that it is probably true that the Dutch language is in decline, but that that is unlikely to be caused by university programs. It is caused by internet, television, and movies. English is so common in The Netherlands nowadays that most children already speak and understand it reasonably well. It is also lingua franca in big cities such as Amsterdam, which are full of people who do not speak Dutch. Moreover, I assume that everyone understands that by teaching in Dutch one will not automatically increase the number of people who read Multatuli or W.F. Hermans.
(2) Universities are expensive and The Netherlands is subsidizing many foreign students who return to their home country after graduation. My argument against this is as follows: First, the government does not pay universities a fixed amount per student; instead, they decide how much money universities get in total, and then distribute that money over the universities based on numbers of students. So having less foreign students does not save the government money. Second, foreign students often pay more for their education than Dutch students, so scaring them away will only reduce the amount of money available. Third, while it can be said that the Dutch government subsidizes foreign students, other countries subsidize Dutch students who travel abroad in the same way. It is a reciprocal system.
(3) There is an urgent lack of housing for students, which is partially caused by so many foreign students coming to the Netherlands. This seems to be the most common argument, and the only one that has actual merit. I understand that, because of EU agreements, it is impossible to forbid students from anywhere in the EU to come. Evidently, with Dijkgraaf’s proposal the Dutch government is trying to circumvent the consequences of the EU agreements by saying to foreign students: “Hey, you can come, but if you are not fluent in Dutch it will be useless.” The government is trying to solve the student housing problem not by building more student housing, but by pestering foreign students. I consider forcing an unnecessary requirement to speak Dutch on foreign students an improper and even immoral way of dealing with the student housing problem.
Even if the government has no qualms about misappropriating the law to alleviate the student housing problem, it is evidently not taking into account that forcing the large number of English programs to become Dutch is an enormous undertaking which will be very expensive, if done properly. Boatloads of materials have to be translated, people need to be trained to teach in Dutch, and videos need to be reshot. New materials will have to be prepared in two languages rather than just one. Classes which are taught only once now, will have to be taught multiple times. Dijkgraaf also indicated the high workload of scientific staff as a reason for his proposal, not noting the irony of his proposal increasing that workload considerably. The funding required will have to come from the government, because universities do not have the means to take on all the extra work. Wouldn’t it be better to spend all that money on student housing?
And what about staff members who are unable to speak Dutch? Will they be fired? Most of them are on permanent contracts, as those were forced on the universities by the government less than two years ago. Programs which rely on non-native scientific staff will need to hire more people to meet the government’s demands, and all those people need to speak Dutch fluently — and these people must be found in a job market where it is already hard to find good scientific staff even if you hire internationally.
Moreover, if the government insists on this ridiculous requirement, I can predict that it will have very little effect on the number of foreign students coming to the Netherlands. Even if in two-thirds of the classes the staff is forced to speak Dutch, as most classes are recorded anyway, it is child’s play to let an AI subtitle a video in English. Basically, the measure becomes an annoyance for students rather than a way of scaring them off.
If the government really wants to reduce the number of foreign students, they should simply tell the universities that they can admit no more than 20% foreign students, and then be upfront about this measure in a European context. If the EU does not accept it, they should fight the EU regulations or improve the housing situation — with the current Dutch housing shortage that is a necessity anyway.
Playful Intelligence 