A petition by trade union FNV Young & United to pay 18-year-olds the normal minimum wage gets support from student organisations ISO and LSVb. The youth departments of some political parties are also backing the initiative. With the slogan 'youth wage is half wage', the youth union has been campaigning for several months against the
The current board of the National Students' Union (LSVb) would not enter into talks with a PVV Education Minister, if there were to be one. That is what president Elisa Weehuizen says. According to Weehuizen, the LSVb, which stems from local student unions and has an activist streak, should 'remain consistently opposed to racism and
In an employment dispute with the University of Groningen, social safety expert Susanne Täuber has again lost out. She was allowed to be dismissed, the Court of Appeal ruled. Täuber criticised the diversity policy at her own university in an article and eventually lost her job. Her dismissal led to protests, petitions and a fundraising
Several dozen students are filing a lawsuit against student finance provider DUO over rising interest rates on study debts. The service allegedly did not provide enough information. The interest rate on study debts will go to 2.56 percent next year. For years, the interest rate was zero percent and some students thought it would always
All parties except the VVD supported an amendment by Pieter Omtzigt in October to lower the interest rate for students under the loan system, the so-called 'pechstudenten' (unlucky students). He wanted to pay for this by reducing the tax benefit for expats, which should raise 183 million euros. But how do you allocate that money
Members of The Young Academy are sticking the thermometer into Dutch science: how about stress, joy and the social safety of researchers? “Filling in the questionnaire takes 15 minutes at most,” says Joeri Tijdink, psychiatrist and ‘meta-scientist’ at VU University Amsterdam. He hopes thousands of researchers will want to participate in The Academy Thermometer, which…
How do you want to keep a grip on the pros and cons of internationalisation yourselves, outgoing Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf asks universities and universities of applied sciences. They must answer within a month. In a new letter (in Dutch) to the House of Representatives on internationalisation, Dijkgraaf says nothing about the controversy surrounding migration, or the…
Some 14.5 thousand international students receive student grants in the Netherlands, reports DUO. This is more than before, perhaps partly due to the new basic grant. The radio programme Nieuws en Co requested the figures from student finance provider DUO and had NSC party leader Pieter Omtzigt respond in Friday night’s broadcast (in Dutch). Omtzigt expects…
A Romanian organisation has helped 260 students get fictitious jobs over the past five years so that they could apply for study grants in the Netherlands. This was revealed in response to parliamentary questions. On paper, the construction was watertight. The student’s family gave money to this organisation (GCRS), which transferred that money to the…
