Disaster due to cuts at university

Imagine you are a university that has just been informed by the Ministry that you need to cut 70,000 guilders from your budget. And your total budget happens to be exactly 70,000 guilders. What is your first thought? Exactly: we are being shut down. That was the predicament Utrecht University found itself in back in 1848. It was not the first time such dire straits threatened its existence – and as we now know, it would not be the last.

A university threatened with downgrading and closure

The first serious threat dates back to 1810, when the French occupiers downgraded the university to an école secondaire. It remained a university, but it could no longer award degrees and, to make matters worse, it was made subordinate to Leiden University.

Fortunately, this situation was reversed in 1815. But by around 1840, new rumours circulated, this time suggesting that the university would be closed altogether to make way for a diocese and seminary following the end of discrimination against Roman Catholics. Two institutions of higher education in a relatively small city like Utrecht seemed, at the time, excessive.

This storm also blew over, but less than a decade later, in 1848, the axe was poised again. This time, a budget cut of 70,000 guilders – the entire budget of Utrecht University – was proposed. Groningen University had a similar budget, but it served the northern Netherlands, so it was deemed essential.

In the 1980s, universities allowed themselves to be pitted against each other. Let us be wary of that this time.

Leiden, with a larger budget, was seen as a reward from William of Orange for the city’s perseverance during the 1574 Siege of Leiden, making it untouchable. Besides, the rapid expansion of the railway network was making Leiden increasingly accessible.

Closing the university would ‘tons of gold’ from the economy

To avert disaster, a flood of pamphlets defending Utrecht’s rights began circulating. The city council sent an urgent appeal to the government, and the provincial governor personally spoke to the king. The argument was not for the university itself but the economic consequences of its closure.

Calculations suggested that shuttering the university would drain half a million guilders from the local economy – ‘tons of gold’, as it was phrased at the time. Some 220 families would lose their student boarders, and over 300 household staff would be out of work. Meanwhile, the professors would still need to be paid on retainers, and who knew what that would cost?

A Groningen strategy also saved Utrecht

Fortunately, this crisis passed as well, and Utrecht could breathe a sigh of relief. But in 1882, Herman Schaepman, the political leader of the Roman Catholics, came up with a new idea: a Catholic university. The Protestants had their own independently funded Free University by then, so why not the Catholics?

By then, the Athenaeum Illustre in Amsterdam had been elevated to city university status, joining the ranks of Leiden, Groningen, and Utrecht. Schaepman knew that adding yet another university might be a hard sell. Without mentioning it directly, he tabled a motion in the House of Representatives, suggesting that given the nation’s financial troubles, two national universities should be sufficient.

For yet another time, Utrecht began to feel the pressure, but a clever solution emerged. They repeated the tactic Groningen had used in 1849: building an impressive University Hall. Should plans to close Utrecht ever take shape, shutting down such a fine facility would seem like immense waste.

Calculations suggested that shuttering the university would drain half a million guilders from the local economy – ‘tons of gold’, as it was phrased at the time.

So it was that in 1886, on its 250th anniversary, the university was gifted the University Hall by the city’s citizens. Opened in 1894, it still stands in the heart of Utrecht today as the face of the university.

Unprecedented cuts in the 1980s

Budget cuts continued to pose a challenge over the years, but in the 1980s, the university was hit harder than ever. One hundred years after Schaepman, the government of the day imposed massive, unprecedented cuts, slashing hundreds of millions of guilders. These cuts, through two infamous policies known as TVC (Task Distribution and Concentration) and SKG (Selective Downsizing and Growth), deeply affected not only the academic world but also the personal lives of countless staff members.

Rumours even circulated that the university hospital would be closed. While that did not happen, the entire sub-faculty of Dentistry in Utrecht did disappear. The Faculty of Humanities suffered most of all: Archaeology was axed, as were Sanskrit, Classical Languages, Old Germanic Studies, Scandinavian Languages, and Frisian.

Lessons from the past

And now we find ourselves on the brink once more. Are there lessons to be learned from history? Historians are cautious here, as history does not repeat itself – the circumstances are always different. But still. In the 1980s, universities allowed themselves to be pitted against each other. Let us be wary of that this time.

And if there is one takeaway, it is this: in 1886, the university faced the threat head-on by building the University Hall. In the 1980s, it struck a deal with the government: we will accept the cuts, but in exchange, we want investment for broad, liberal arts-inspired programmes – General Arts and General Social Sciences. I owe my own job to that deal. Is there not some revolutionary, never-seen-before idea we could introduce once more?