Hans and Hans started a trade in arguments. It’s almost impossible to get more Dutch, wrote NRC in 1994 about the Bureau for Economic Argumentation (BEA), which was founded in 1987 by two friends and economists Hans Kamps and Hans de Boer. In the polder, ever consultative Netherlands, the consultancy grew into a company with an annual turnover of 5 million guilders, before it was taken over by KPMG. In the NRCarticle, the two founders are characterized as “good, wayward economists and a bit strange types”.
Last Friday, Kamps died at the age of 70 after a short illness. Two years after the death of his student friend and business partner De Boer, who later became chairman of employers’ club VNO-NCW, who died at the age of 66 from a cerebral haemorrhage.
Rather in the background
De Boer was the man in the foreground, Kamps preferred to stay in the background. But work, they both did, always. From Monday to Sunday evening, Kamps told in an interview in de Volkskrant. His wife had the choice: do something fun on Sunday afternoon or on Saturday, but no more than three hours, then work had to start again.
When Kamps was sixteen years old, his father was killed by a drunk driver. That event greatly influenced his work ethic. “In one moment I became serious.” He wanted to achieve something, now that he had seen that life could just be over, he later concluded.
An economic column by Ed Peereboom on the radio sparked his interest in economics. But studying was not self-evident for him. He grew up in the Sterrenwijk in Utrecht, in a ‘working-class environment’ as he called it. There were two flavors in his environment, Kamps told in an interview NRC: you went to vocational education or, if you could study well, at most to mulo.
He did the latter, after which he completed HAVO and HEAO (higher economic and administrative education). That was not enough for a university education, but to his own surprise he was allowed to enroll for the study of macroeconomics at the Free University. He graduated cum laude.
There he also met De Boer. The two found each other in a similar background; De Boer was also the first in his family to go to university. “I was a late student and I was looking for support from someone. I asked Hans if I could borrow his lecture notes. Many others would have said: do it yourself. Hans not”, said Kamps about their meeting against it Financial Daily. The best friends spoke almost daily for 47 years.
Kamps was able to study thanks to scholarships.
Letter of thanks to minister
After graduating, he wrote a note to the Minister of Education. “I have received money from you since high school. It went flawlessly. So thank you very much and I will gladly pay it back.” He meant that. He received a note back: the debt had been canceled because he had graduated cum laude. He found it a “sad observation” that student finance is less nowadays.
After the Hansen sold BEA to the KPMG consultancy in 1994, Kamps held various – and above all many – positions in administrative positions in the Netherlands. He was, among other things, chairman of the employment umbrella organization ABU and Youth Care Netherlands. He was a member of the Supervisory Board of FD Mediagroep and ASN Bank. In 2014, when he stepped down as chairman of the ABU, he said in NRC to have already had 65 jobs at that time. “What a chaotic career.”
He was also co-owner of B&A, an agency for advice and implementation in the field of welfare, youth and work. In 2010 he wrote the election program of the PvdA. Kamps was committed to opportunities for young people with disabilities. He himself had a brother with a disability. Kamps had a permanent place in the Top 200 most influential Dutch people who de Volkskrant publishes every year.
‘Renaissance man’
In 2006 the Hansen start a new project together; the vocational college. There is – even then – a huge shortage of technical professionals. At that time, no politician in The Hague was still concerned about this. De Boer and his friend Koos de Vos decide to find a solution to the problem themselves. They ask Kamps to join them. With a modern vocational school, technical training should become popular again.
Between 2008 and 2011, sixty pre-vocational secondary education courses in the country will be converted into vocational colleges. The success rates are skyrocketing, teachers and parents are very enthusiastic. They all make a million from it, but after the sale it gets into such financial problems that the Ministry of Education has to step in.
After Kamps’ farewell to the employment agency ABU, then education minister Jet Bussemaker (PvdA) called him a “Renaissance man, a discoverer and reformer, an enlightened and sharp mind”. “He was absolutely that,” writes the ABU after his death on the site. “And Hans was courteous, a man full of humor and with a great ability to put things into perspective. Also a bit of Pietje Bel.”
A version of this article also appeared in the September 4, 2023 issue.