The new government recently presented the outline of their new agreement. UNL has described it as a bash for our students and staff, which the Faculty Board endorses. A long-study fine will be introduced for students, the growth fund will be scrapped, funding for sector plans will be reversed from 2026, and it is uncertain whether the incentive grants will remain. How these goals will be implemented is currently unclear. We expect to be able to give more clarity on this after Budget Day 2024. However, we already know that financially challenging times are coming. This is also on top of the reduction that was already known earlier due to adjusted student numbers in the reference estimate (only in Dutch).
We are a financially healthy faculty, we would like to remain so now and in the future. Together with the education and research directors, we make financially responsible decisions based on the interests of education, research and impact, with an eye for our staff and workload. This means we will have to prioritise and make choices together in the coming period. which will not always be easy and may mean, for example, that employees who leave will not automatically be replaced. We are already seeing the effect of this in 2024 and expect this to continue even more in the coming period.
How the changes will take shape in the Faculty of Social Sciences will be worked out in the coming period. While this is a challenge, it also offers opportunities for cooperation, synergy and creativity. We are confident that we will be able to work well together and come up with solutions. If you already have ideas or suggestions, we invite you to contact your manager, the programme or research director or via bestuur.fsw [at] ru.nl (bestuur[dot]fsw[at]ru[dot]nl). We understand that you may have concerns or feel uncertain about these developments, so please feel free to contact your manager with these questions. As soon as there are new developments, more clarity or other updates, we will communicate these via the FSW Weekly Update.