The Bachelor’s degree in Earth Sciences at the Free University (VU) will disappear if it is up to that university. As a result, 37 employees risk losing their jobs. Some students may have to find another programme, they were told last Thursday.
The decision is an austerity measure. In the past year, the university announced millions in budget cuts. As a result, the bachelor’s programme in Earth Sciences will have to be discontinued by September 2027, as will one of the tracks of the subsequent master’s programme in Earth Sciences. Other universities, including TU Delft, are also having to tighten their belts.
The bachelor’s programme attracts fewer and fewer students and has become too expensive, says dean Aletta Kraneveld in Ad Valvas, the VU’s independent journal. The decision is not yet final; it still has to pass the representation bodies. VU is currently discussing with Utrecht University whether students can take courses there. Utrecht is home to the only other Dutch-language earth science programme in the Netherlands.
More technical angle in Delft
At TU Delft, until this academic year, students could enroll in the English-language bachelor’s programme Applied Earth Sciencies, which has a more technical angle than its counterparts at VU and UU. But from September 2025, that Delft programme will no longer exist with that name. It will be renewed and continue under the name Earth, Climate and Technology. That choice was made to better incorporate contemporary societal challenges into the curriculum.
VU is not the first university to scrap entire sections due to a need for budget cuts. For example, the Zeeuws University College, part of Utrecht University, recently announced it was downsizing by a quarter. At the University of Twente’s Faculty of Applied Sciences, eight departments are disappearing. What the cuts will look like at TU Delft is not yet known.
HOP, Olmo Linthorst/Delta, Kim Bakker
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