Minister is looking at additional scholarship for more students

In order to allow students from middle-income families to benefit more from the basic grant that will return from 2023, Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf is considering making students from more income groups eligible for a supplementary grant. This will mean that the maximum for the supplementary grant or the basic grant itself will be somewhat lower, the minister warns.

Various parties in the House asked for more attention to middle-income earners with the return of the study grant. Dijkgraaf was sensitive to that point and emphasized that there is “not yet a definitive variant” of what the basic grant should look like. The cabinet has drawn up a ‘thinking line’ and wants to discuss this with the House. A crucial point remains: the budget will not exceed 1 billion euros per year.

Dijkgraaf is reluctant to look for cutbacks in his own department to increase the basic grant budget. That “is always problematic”, says the minister after questions from the CDA, among others: it would mean that he has to “cause pain” in other areas, for example culture.

Elaborate versions

But within that amount of 1 billion per year, the minister is considering shifting slightly compared to his first proposal. For example, he wants to develop a version in which the households that qualify for a supplementary grant “run a little further to a higher income limit”. As a result, more students from the middle class are eligible for an additional amount, on top of the basic grant.

Dijkgraaf also allows a variant to work through in which the basic grant is actually higher, and the supplementary grant is therefore relatively smaller. The amount of the supplementary grant depends on the income of the student’s family. A higher basic grant is therefore a measure that benefits students from lower-income families less.

The minister is also open to reversing the halving of tuition fees in the first year. “That is something that we can certainly include in possible plans,” he tells the House. But “then we have to see exactly what the goal is that we want to achieve with this”. Reversing this measure would net around 15 million euros for Dutch students, because foreign students also benefit from the halving.