10,000 students to receive compensation after discriminatory fraud checks

This is according to education minister Eppo Bruins, who informed the House of Representatives of his plans earlier today. Compensation will be offered to students who since 2012 have suffered ‘indirect discrimination’ as a result of a programme launched by DUO – the agency responsible for student financing – to track down fraudsters. The previous government apologised for this systemic failure.

The pattern of discrimination came to light thanks to investigative research (in Dutch) by the Higher Education Press Agency (HOP), Investico, NOSop3 and daily newspaper Trouw. A follow-up investigation commissioned by the Ministry of Education revealed that the situation was even worse than thought.

Hunt for fraudsters

Students who live away from home receive around 2,200 euros more per year in basic student support than their peers who still live with their parents. This has led some in the latter group to report false address information to DUO, which then used questionable methods to combat this form of fraud.

Even the initial screening to distinguish ‘suspicious’ from ‘non-suspicious’ students was flawed, with DUO using an algorithm that indirectly discriminated on the basis of cultural background. This effect was amplified in the manual evaluation of the system’s results, leading fraud inspectors to make a disproportionate number of home visits to students with a non-Western migration background.

A lot also went wrong during these home visits, for instance because the inspectors didn’t take enough time to carry out a thorough investigation. What’s more, they relied on questionable conversations with neighbours for students who weren’t home.

Lawsuits and childcare benefits scandal

DUO lost one in four court cases brought by students who felt they’d been unfairly penalised with fines and clawbacks. When it became clear that almost all the claimants in these cases had a migration background, the allegations of discrimination could no longer be denied. Then-minister Robbert Dijkgraaf immediately halted the fraud checks and apologised on behalf of the government a few months later.

His successor, Eppo Bruins, is now taking the next step in the reparations process by offering unconditional refunds to all those affected. He notes that the government wants to “learn from previous recovery operations, such as the compensation efforts in response to the childcare benefits scandal”.

Bruins doesn’t have many other options, given the outcome of a recent court case (in Dutch) brought by a student against DUO (or rather the education minister): it was ruled that the ‘evidence’ against the student had been obtained illegally.

The judge also emphasised that the conclusions from the home visit wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, and that the student would have won the case regardless. A painful detail: the same woman was also one of the victims in the childcare benefits scandal.

Based on these new insights, students can now have their old cases reassessed. “So far, DUO has received 23 review requests”, Bruins writes. Given the illegal nature of the algorithm, the students are expected to win all these cases, which is why the Minister has decided to get ahead of the situation.

Using a budget windfall for student financing, Bruins has earmarked 61 million euros for compensation: 47 million for the students and 14 million to implement the restitution process. He did not yet know when the students could expect to receive the money.

Deep impression

Since this story first broke, the education ministry and DUO have held 11 meetings across the country to talk about the fraud checks. A total of 83 students participated in these discussions, and one of the meetings was attended by former minister Dijkgraaf. “The conversations with these students left a deep impression”, his successor now writes.

“Some students felt – as the meetings revealed – defenceless against the government’s actions”, he adds. “Their trust has been damaged. For many of them, this was one of their first moments of contact with the government. We need to do better.”

Guidelines for home visits will be updated to ensure that organisations become more sensitive to cultural differences. After all, there’s a wide variety of student accommodation. Or, as Bruins puts it: “In a general sense, awareness of the different worlds students inhabit could be strengthened at the Ministry, at DUO and among inspectors.”

Actual fraudsters

There’s no doubt that some of the students who will receive compensation did actually commit fraud, meaning they were fined for good reason. Bruins acknowledges this: “From a societal perspective, this is undesirable and should ideally be avoided.” But there’s simply no way around this, he concludes.

Bruins now wants to set up a new anti-fraud system without repeating the mistakes of the past. “Trust in citizens will be one of the fundamental principles”, he writes. A challenge, to be sure. As the Minister notes, there’s a tension between “respecting citizens’ privacy and effective monitoring of the lawful granting of benefits”.

“People living in the Netherlands should be able to trust that who they are will have no effect on how they are treated”, Bruins writes. He points out that the compensation scheme is part of a wider effort by the current cabinet to “restore confidence in the government”.

HOP, Bas Belleman