You know, the teacher said, I’ll explain it in Dutch. That was easier for her and easier for us to understand. It didn’t take long: because of the international character of the Dutch political science study, the course had to be taught in English. Also elected Dutch as students and teacher.
I was reminded of that weekly ritual in the lecture hall when universities last week called on roomless international students not to come anymore. Under the influence of the idea that everything is a market – and humans are primarily consumers – universities have been chasing ‘internationals’ for the past twenty years or so. Because internationalization is a revenue model that follows from the perverse financing of higher education (more students equals more money, and students from outside the EU pay more tuition fees). And because everything here revolves around ‘earning capacity’.
Internationalization strengthens ‘the international competitiveness of the Netherlands’, said one Mark Rutte as State Secretary in 2004. As education minister in 2008, PvdA member Plasterk wanted education to be ‘internationally well positioned and marketed’. The university as a multinational.
Four out of ten first-year students now come from outside the Netherlands. The ‘international classroom’ is overcrowded. Student cities cannot handle so many students who have to move into rooms.
To quote Houellebecq again, the Netherlands is beginning to be a problem. The Netherlands is not a country but an example. Public space becomes one big advertising column, the university becomes a company, culture is especially valuable as an export product.
It is the globalist elites who are deliberately undermining Dutch culture, shouts that one Leiden academic with a French-sounding surname. These are elites who view public issues purely from an economic logic, shouts this Leiden alumnus.
Because why should universities mainly be on earth to contribute to the international competitive position of the Netherlands? Is it worth anything that you to Komrij, “find gold when you look for pebbles”? Not according to the ill-considered acceptance of the idea that what’s good for the economy is good for society (or that the latter doesn’t). The BV Netherlands had to flourish, so internationalization had to be stimulated. We will later feel the loss of the weakened ties between the national community and the university.
For example, commerce suppresses culture, economic incentives undermine the search for what that nation still is in globalized times. You don’t have to be a convinced nationalist to worry about what threatens to happen: a company in which no one feels at home anymore.
Mark Lievisse Adriaanse ([email protected]) is editor of NRC.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of August 2, 2022