New Faculty of Humanities spending reduction plan
The Faculty of Humanities has shared a new spending reduction plan with its students and staff. Although the plans are less sweeping than previous ones, we still need to make painful decisions: the proposal to scrap the Bachelor’s in Italian Language and Culture, for example.
The Faculty Board recently held extensive discussions with the programme chairs and they have provided input on the new plans. The following measures have now been proposed:
- Admission to the Italian Language and Culture Bachelor’s programme will stop as of the 2026/2027 academic year and the programme will be wound down. Current students will be able to finish their degree.
- Participation in the joint Master’s in European Politics and Society will end, paying heed to the deadlines in the consortium agreement. This is a European collaboration.
- Admission to the Research Master’s in African Studies and the Research Master’s in Latin American Studies will stop as of the 2026/2027 academic year and the programmes will be wound down. These are small master’s programmes with an intake of just a few students. The regular Master’s in African Studies and Latin American Studies will continue to exist.
Decision
The student and staff participation bodies still need to issue an opinion on the proposed plans. The Executive Board will make the final decision about whether to close the programmes.
There is good news for programmes previously mentioned in the plans that may have been scrapped:
- The Bachelor’s in African Studies and Latin American Studies will continue as separate programmes.
- French and German will continue as separate programmes. The Faculty Board has abandoned the plan for a broad bachelor’s programme in European languages and cultures.
- The specialisations in the Bachelor’s programmes in Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Middle Eastern Studies (such as Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Islam Studies etc.) will continue in a slimmed-down form.
- The broad Bachelor’s in Asian Studies will be developed but will not be realised as yet. We are currently looking into what changes could be made to the relevant courses to allow them to continue as separate labels. These are Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, Korean Studies and South and Southeast Asian Studies.
Dean’s response
‘It hurts to cancel Italian’, says Mark Rutgers, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities. ‘One consideration of our board in this respect is that as a university, we also have a clear societal responsibility, which is why we are choosing to maintain the languages taught at school, German and French. This will enable us to continue to train secondary school teachers. As regards Italian, the programme is at least offered elsewhere in the Netherlands.’
The cuts at the Faculty would now be realised by, among others, reducing the large number of courses offered within the degree programmes. There are also many elective courses that only a handful of students enrol in, and this has become unaffordable.
‘Degree programmes have already started scrapping courses and electives,’ says Dean Mark Rutgers. ‘That will already result in significant savings and we are going to continue with this. This means that although fewer courses will be offered to students, there will still be enough to obtain a full degree. We are also asking programmes to work together more where possible. The programme chairs have been very proactive in looking into this.
‘We are convinced that these choices will allow us to build a strong, future-oriented faculty. We do not yet know whether this is enough: the effects of government policy, such as the Balanced Internationalisation Act, may necessitate extra measures.’