Humanities Crisis in the Netherlands
Summary
An introductory post to global Humanities news, starting with the slashing of Humanities programs across multiple Dutch Universities and it's origins.
When it comes to the cutting and defunding of Humanities programs, it’s important to realize that this is far more than a national problem. In reality, the Humanities crisis is faced by universities and schools all over the world, and quite often for the same reasons as ours. Because of this, I’d like to dedicate some posts to International Humanities cuts, so that we can stay aware of the crisis’ developments (and solutions) worldwide.
One of the more recent developments can be found in the Netherlands, where after severe government cuts, multiple universities announced decisions to slash numerous Humanities majors and courses. According to Mare, an official website of Netherlands’ Leiden University, bachelor degrees in Religious Studies, African Studies and Latin American Studies would be scrapped, alongside tracts in Middle Eastern Studies. Other international programs such as Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Southeast Asia Studies would be merged into a single “Asian Studies”, while French, German and Italian would become European Languages and Cultures. Similar master’s programs would also be discontinued or merged. The Faculty Board’s reasoning for this was that programs such as African Studies or Latin American Studies were “considered unprofitable due to an ‘insufficient’ number of students.”
In addition to this, they also moved to eliminate “at least three hundred courses” alongside the potential cutting of multiple majors. Elective and smaller courses would be targeted to make way for larger, more profitable ones with opportunities for more shared courses. These proposals were met with heavy criticism both from Humanities faculty and University staff, with the Executive Board urging the Faculty Board to “reconsider this plan and engage in national discussions on which programmes should be retained.”
The main reasons for these cuts, Mare says, is that Humanities programs were “in dire straits and must make substantial budget cuts.” Reasons included students obtaining fewer credits, a decrease in PhD completions, and increasing wage costs. They expected that the university’s deficit would reach 5.7 million euros (roughly 5.9 million dollars) annually after 2025.
Such a deficit, however, can’t be blamed on University spending alone, as these cuts can be seen happening nationwide. An update from the Leiden Executive Board on January 28, 2025 announced that they would have to make “an additional 4.5 million euros in structural budget cuts by 2026 (on top of the planned budget reductions).” According to them, this is mainly due to the recent government cuts and the Balanced Internationalization Act, which originally passed with the goal of limiting classes taught in English, and now additionally aims to increase fees and restrict numbers of international students.
As for recent government cuts, the updates explain that in 2024, coalition parties reached an agreement over the Netherlands education budget, with over half a billion being made to higher education and science. This, alongside already present budget deficits, is what Leiden and many other Dutch universities aim to grapple with. The University has emphasized in their update that they are working alongside faculty and staff to “do all we can to mitigate the effects of the government’s planned cuts.”