The Dutch education sector is in turmoil, once again. Four years after the student occupations that began in Amsterdam and swept the whole country, the totality of teachers in the Netherlands is due to strike, for the first time ever, on March 15. This sector-wide strike follows in the wake of a wave of successful teachers’ strikes in the United States. The strike will be a loud opening salvo; a powerful broadside will follow if the government doesn’t listen.
So what’s wrong with Dutch education? The answer can be found in the policy mix pursued by successive Dutch governments, contriving to simulate an austerity-driven market mechanism in the public sector. Universities and schools are encouraged to compete against each other for students and monies, under emaciated budgets, on the basis of dubious benchmarks and targets. The policy has raised the student/staff ratio in the Netherlands to one among the highest in the OECD – higher than the US, Greece and Italy; the ratio is approaching 20 in the main research universities.
These pathologies are consequences of diminishing funding per student (68% more university students since 2000, and -25% in government funding per student) creeping micromanagement of teaching and research, and growing authoritarianism from management – all made possible, indeed foisted on university teachers and researchers, by government policy.
