‘Closing VU earth sciences sends exactly the wrong message’

On 3 April, the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam (VU) announced the decision to close its Earth Sciences Department and cut 37 jobs in the process (with another five jobs to be cut in the near future) as part of a wider measure to save the VU EUR 60 million. The BSc degree in Earth Sciences with its 130 students will be discontinued, and the students will be redirected to other programmes and universities to complete their studies.

First and foremost, we want to express our solidarity with our colleagues and the students at the VU, as well as with their families, who face unprecedented uncertainties about their future. Our thoughts are with them.

These cuts are not only devastating for the affected staff and students at the VU. They will have major consequences for geoscience research and teaching in the Netherlands and beyond. Geoscience research and teaching in the Netherlands was, and still is, highly respected around the world and is often regarded internationally as leading by industry and academia alike. This respect is firmly grounded in the collaborative, complementary, and international approach to geoscience research and teaching across the Netherlands.

This will reduce the number of urgently needed graduates

Losing a crucial part of the Dutch geoscience knowledge base at the VU will weaken the international standing of the Netherlands in the broader field of earth and geosciences, not only putting innovation at risk at a time when we can ill afford it, but also reducing the number of urgently needed graduates.

Geosciences underpin many of the solutions that we need to find, faster than ever, to tackle some of the most severe challenges humanity faces today: combating climate change, access to clean water, energy security and energy transition, sustainable sourcing of critical raw materials, understanding the impact of environmental change, and mitigating the risks of natural hazards.

While we can debate how we can better communicate the importance of geosciences to increase student numbers, closing the Earth Sciences department at the VU sends the wrong message: that geosciences are expendable at a time when they are needed more urgently than ever.

Only through continued cooperation and solidarity – not only in the field of geosciences, and not only in the Netherlands –will universities be able to push back against short-sighted Government cuts and anti-science politics that threaten to inflict long-term and potentially devastating damage to our society.