Wellicht krijgen masterstudenten in de toekomst vaker stipendia of beurzen uit het bedrijfsleven. Het kabinet wil dit aanjagen en hoopt dat dit de gevolgen van de bezuinigingen zal dempen.
Nu masterstudenten hun basisbeurs verliezen, komt er misschien meer ruimte voor werkgevers: die kunnen talentvolle studenten aan zich binden door hun een studiebeurs te geven. In een motie hebben CDA en VVD gevraagd of het ministerie de mogelijkheden eens kan verkennen. Maar de VVD vond dat het kabinet hier niet snel genoeg mee aan de slag ging en stelde vorige maand extra vragen.
Zijlstra stelt de vragenstellers van zijn eigen partij gerust. De komende maanden houdt het ministerie van OCW interviews met studenten, werkgevers, onderwijsinstellingen en ondernemers om te kijken welke ideeën ze hebben. Zo wil het kabinet ook ‘commitment creëren’.
De meest kansrijke ideeën mogen verder worden uitgewerkt door een denktank met mensen uit het onderwijs en bedrijfsleven. De resultaten gaan verschijnen op de website www.masterklasse.nl, die voorlopig nog leeg is.
OCW krijgt hulp van de Koninklijke Hollandsche Maatschappij der Wetenschappen (niet te verwarren met de Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen), die al sinds 1752 bestaat en ervaring heeft met particuliere stipendia en prijzen. Koninklijk werd deze maatschappij in 2002, toen zij 250 jaar bestond.
Eén ding benadrukt Zijlstra: eigenlijk gaat hij er niet over. Hij wil best praten met het bedrijfsleven en overleggen met zijn collega’s van Economische Zaken en Binnenlandse Zaken, maar uiteindelijk gaat hij alleen over de studiefinanciering en zal de markt het toch echt zelf moeten doen. Hij wil vooral “aansluiting zoeken bij het maatschappelijk initiatief op dit vlak”.
“This tunnel tops everything”, chief of construction and TU Delft alumnus Peter Gossink light-heartedly told his audience during the recent ‘Delft bouw aan je toekomst’ symposium. “I’ve worked on the Barendrecht railway tunnel, a highway tunnel near Utrecht and the tunnel of the A73.” Referencing the latter project results in peels of laughter from the audience, since completion of the A73 tunnel project was notoriously delayed.
The symposium was organized by ‘Werkplaats Spoorzone Delft’, an organization set up by Delft residents who want to encourage dialogue between the contractors, Prorail and the municipality on the one side, and residents, artists, entrepreneurs and TU Delft on the other.
The challenge he faces, Gossink states, is mostly logistical. For the next decade at least, a long stretch of the city along the railway line will be nothing more than a string of construction sites. Ultimately, however, approximately two kilometres of railway line will be underground, and the rail capacity will be doubled through the addition of two extra sets of tracks. Aboveground a new neighbourhood will be built, consisting of an expansive park, a huge, new, futuristic-looking railway station and city hall combined in one building, 1,500 new homes and 50,000 square meters of offices and shops. But until then, trains, buses, trams, cars, bicycles, pedestrians and even some cruise boats must be able to pass as smoothly as possible through this artery of the city.
During the symposium, the problem of subsiding houses caused by the construction of the North-South metro line in Amsterdam was also raised. When will things go similarly wrong in Delft, was one of the inevitable questions.
Gossink however isn’t worried about potentially subsiding houses: “In Amsterdam they’re digging to a depth of 32 meters, whereas here in Delft we’re only going down to a depth of 12 meters. And the soil in Delft is different.”
JanGeert van der Post, one of Delft city council’s project managers for the railway project and also a TU alumnus, elaborates.
“People strolling along the Phoenixstraat will notice workers digging very close to the houses”, he explains. “What the work crews are doing is transferring electricity cables and water pipes from the middle of road to just half a meter from the house facades. They have to make way for the tunnel, since one of the tunnel’s outer walls will be at a distance of just three meters from these homes.
“Digging a tunnel that close to the houses could be dangerous. To minimise the risks, the contractors are using a technique involving so-called slurry walls.”
The contractors dig trenches up to 24 meters deep, which is where the first underground sand layer is situated. While digging these trenches, workers continually fill the trenches with bentonite (a mixture of water and a specific type of clay) to prevent collapse. Once a trench is finished, reinforcements are lowered in, and the trench is filled with concrete to replace the slurry.
When both tunnel walls are finished, a concrete roof is built on top of it. Traffic can then, theoretically, pass along on top of this construction, while the contractors excavate the tunnel. Once one of the tunnels is completely finished – scheduled for 2013 – train traffic will run underground and the viaduct will be demolished in order to make way for the second tunnel.
But what if things go wrong? If, like in Amsterdam, the grooves between the concrete walls are not perfectly sealed off, water can leak through and take sediment along with it. Gossink: “In Amsterdam the retaining walls reached the second sand layer. The houses rest on a shallower sand layer. Sand from this latter layer leaked through the grooves, causing problems. But it’s impossible for this to happen in Delft, because the tunnel walls do not reach deeper than the first sand layer.”
Still, subsiding homes is not something to be taken lightly, which is why, Van der Post says, Prorail decided to take out an insurance policy to cover such problems should they occur: “In all four agencies, including the insurance company and the municipality, are supervising the construction in order to prevent homes from subsiding”
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