We

the staff of the Dutch universities

establish that:

• that investments in university education and its closely knit relationship with research is continuing to decrease. In recent years, the amount of governmental funding per student has fallen by a quarter. As a result, the workload among university staff has increased to unacceptable heights. The quality of university education and research is therefore seriously at stake.

• The threat will be: even more massive lectures, fewer contact hours and less supervision time per student.

• Staff at Dutch universities are worn out. Six out of ten employees have physical or psychological complaints.

• If there is no realistic funding for current academic tasks, the students will not get the education they need, and this will endanger the international position of our higher education. This should not happen in a knowledge society like the Netherlands!

and request

• Four thousand new lecturers should be hired, as already promised by the departing government. The funds released due to the abolition of the general student scholarships should, as promised, be used for this purpose.

• However, the current government plans lead to substantially less funding for university education. The so-called "quality agreements" do not solve this problem. In the first place, more money must go to university education, not less.

• It is insufficient to invest more in research only. Both education and research need more money, and the current plans lead to a disturbance of the interrelationship between these two. More pressure on education will also affect research.

In short, the current government plans lead to a further shortage of lecturers, a further increase in workload amongst both lecturers and students, a decline in the quality of education, and even greater disturbance of the interrelationship between education and research. This should not happen.