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'The Dutch Universities between the "New Democracy" and the "New Management" ' (1975)

'The Dutch Universities between the "New Democracy" and the "New Management" '

(1975)–Hans Daalder–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige

The Dutch Universities between the ‘New Democracy’ and the ‘New Management’
Hans Daalder

In the Autumn of 1970, the Dutch parliament passed a new University Government Reorganization Act. It was introduced by the Catholic minister of education and science, Dr. G. Veringa,1 under a coalition cabinet composed of members of the Catholic, two Protestant, and Liberal parties - the latter occupies the place of a moderate conservative party in Dutch politics. The bill was opposed within parliament by the left-wing opposition parties - most notably the Labor party and a new radical party, Democrats '66 - and was attacked bitterly by radical students outside it. The bill was the government's response to the Dutch événements de mai - that is, May 1969 - the month in which conflict suddenly flared on one campus after another, one full year after the events in France. The new University Government Reorganization Act did not meet the opposition's demands for some form of ‘parliamentary’ university government. But it introduced far-reaching reforms.

Four basic questions have arisen from its passage and from the slow process of application which has followed since: (1) What is the basic structure of the act, denounced as a compromise by dissatisfied radical students, hallowed by some as the ‘democratization of the university,’ hated by others as a threat to the very heart of academic freedom? (2) How are we to account for the passage of this act, which is more radical than similar legislation in other countries and which came unexpectedly in the traditionally sober atmosphere of the Dutch universities and of Dutch society in general? (3) What consequences does the execution of the act have for the functioning of Dutch universities? What conflicts are emerging? What is the character of present university politics? And to what degree is the university becoming an arena for political conflicts beyond the immediate issues of teaching or research? (4) How can the ‘new democracy,’ on the one hand, and the seemingly antithetical trend towards the ‘new

management’ on the other - both of which are characteristic of Dutch as well as other contemporary Western societies and which are both pressing on the university - be brought into balance?

The ‘crisis of the university’ obviously comprises many things beyond the present conflict about ‘university democracy.’ These include expansion of numbers of students and staff, procedures of central government financing, arguments for curricular reform, debate on the balance of teaching and research in the universities, future demand for university graduates, academic freedom versus social accountability, and so on. My selection concentrates almost exclusively on the problem of university organization; I do this for two reasons above all. The Dutch case represents in many ways a unique experiment in revolution from above, in response to student activism from below, and all these other significant things will be greatly affected by the impact of the act on the organization of the universities.

The University Government Reorganization Act of 1970

Before we trace the effects of the new act on Dutch university life, it is first necessary to describe its main formal provisions.2

Central University Organization

Traditionally, the Dutch universities were governed - in a phrase dear to rectores magnifici in assembly oratory - by a duplex ordo: a mainly honorific board of regents (curatoren) which oversaw the administrative side, and the senate and the faculties, composed of full professors only, which were in

charge of education and research.3 The new reorganization act substituted a condominium of two bodies - a university council (Universiteitsraad) and an executive board (College van Bestuur).

The university council consists of a maximum of five sixths of elected members, and a minimum of one sixth of persons chosen to represent society at large; these are appointed by the Crown on the nomination of the elected members. The elected members are chosen by and from three distinct ‘constituencies’: the academic staff irrespective of grade but excluding student assistants, all nonacademic staff members, and students of more than six months' standing. The act requires that a minimum of one third of the elected members of the university council must be chosen from the academic staff, and it limits representation for each of the other two categories to a maximum of one third. In order to be allowed to fill all its allotted seats, a minimum turnout of 35 percent of eligible voters is required in each constituency. If the actual turnout is lower than 35 percent, the number of seats is reduced proportionately.

The executive board is a mixtum compositum of elected and appointed members. In most universities the board has five full-time members: two elected for two-year periods by the university council from members of the academic staff, two appointed for a four-year period by the minister of education after consultation with - but not necessarily with the assent of - the university council, and the rector magnificus. The latter is nominated by the board of deans, and is appointed by the minister for a minimum period of two years after consultation with the university council.

The board of deans is composed of the deans of faculties - who must be full professors or readers. It has mainly advisory powers in relation to the other two central bodies on all matters relating to education and research. Apart from its role in nominating the rector magnificus, its chief function is the granting of doctoral degrees, for which it appoints ad hoc committees of professors and readers.

The relationship between the university council and the executive board is complex. Article 20, section 2, gives the university council

‘authority to regulate and administer all matters of the university as a whole insofar as these have not been entrusted by or under this Act to the executive board.’

Article 31 charges the executive board with the daily administration of the university and stipulates that it has, as a minimum, the performance of the following tasks: (a) to prepare, publish, and execute the decisions of the university council; (b) to take charge of buildings, efficient financial administration, and all university property; (c) to appoint and dismiss all personnel, and to be in charge of all further personnel management insofar as the authority in such matters has not been reserved in the Higher Education Act by the Crown or the minister;4 (d) to enter into contracts and represent the university in all other legal actions; (e) to carry out all correspondence on behalf of the university; (f) to supervise permanently all matters which concern the university.

These clauses were the subject of bitter contention at the time the bill was passed in parliament. The left opposition parties demanded that the elected university council be the sole sovereign body in matters of university government, that the executive board should have no independent powers, and that its members should be responsible to, and removable by, the university council through a vote of no confidence, as in a parliamentary system. The minister and the government parties resisted this demand. The executive board was given powers of its own and guaranteed tenure for a fixed period. The board was to keep the university council completely informed, but it was responsible not only to the university council but also to the minister for the proper exercise of its powers. The executive board was given authority, moreover, to suspend decrees of the university council, by referring them to the minister who can quash council decrees on grounds of conflict with the law or the general interest. In extreme cases of neglect or of the illegal functioning of a university or part of it, the Crown may by decree withdraw the powers of a particular university organ and charge another university organ, a group of persons, or even a single person with the exercise of such powers.

Faculty Organization

The chief divisions under the central university organs are the larger faculties (e.g., theology, law, letters, sciences, medicine, economics, and social sciences), often subdivided into subfaculties (e.g., mathematics, physics, psychology, sociology, and languages). Each faculty or subfaculty

is governed by a faculty council. In these councils, the three separate categories which elect the university council - academic personnel, nonacademic staff, and students - are again represented by direct election, albeit in a somewhat different proportion from the university council. The council members chosen by and from the academic staff must have at least one half of the faculty council seats, the distribution of the remainder of the seats among the three categories to be determined by the faculty rules which must have the approval of the university council. The faculty council elects a dean and a faculty executive, of whom only the dean must be a full professor or reader. The faculty council is responsible for all faculty matters - in particular, the organization and coordination of the teaching and research programs. For the latter, it must consult special education and research committees of which the majority of members must belong to the academic staff. The faculty council appoints examination committees of at least three members from among the academic staff on permanent tenure; at least one member must be a full professor or reader. It institutes committees to prepare nominations for full professorships and readerships; these committees must be composed of full professors and readers but the faculty council may decide to add ‘other experts.’ The faculty council votes on the nominations by such a committee, and can change or refuse the nomination. But it must always add the advice of the nomination committee when it refers its decision to the executive board of the university; the committee report, therefore, becomes part of the documentation on which that body and the minister base their final decisions.

‘Vakgroep’ - Board for Direct Teaching and Research Tasks

Responsibility for actual teaching and research in a particular academic discipline5 is entrusted to newly established collective entities, the so-called vakgroepen. These bring together academic and nonacademic staff as well as advanced students who work in a given academic field. They are governed by vakgroep boards. The act prescribes that all full professors, readers, special lecturers in the discipline, and any other academic staff members in the field who are appointed on permanent tenure are automatically members

of the vakgroep board. It further stipulates that representatives of academic staff without permanent tenure, nonacademic staff, and students who contribute to the work of the vakgroep may be added to the professional nucleus. The explanatory memorandum accompanying the bill stipulates that the permanent core should at any rate have at least one half of the seats of the vakgroep board but the text of the act leaves it to the faculty council to decide on the actual proportion of staff with tenure, on the one hand, and of representatives of staff without tenure, nonacademic staff, and students, on the other hand. The chairman of the vakgroep board must be chosen from among the full professors or readers, and he may appeal to the faculty council from any decision of the vakgroep board with which he disagrees.

Such were the main clauses of the new act which received royal assent after a difficult passage through parliament on December 9, 1970. Ever since, Dutch universities have been engaged in the arduous process of carrying out its main stipulations. Hundreds of persons have labored in meeting after meeting, to draw up rules at the level of the vakgroep, the faculty, and the university. As faculty rules require approval from the university council, and the university rules need the consent of the minister of education, who is in turn advised by a special, high-level committee of experts,6 this process is still far from ended. The new act is to run for an experimental period of six years, ending on August 31, 1976. At midpoint, it looks as if the universities may be in labor for almost that full period.

Why Such Drastic Legislation in the Netherlands?

It would be difficult to argue that the drastic changes contained in the new act were the result of particularly strong action on the part of militant students. Compared with other countries, Dutch student agitation came relatively late. General student life had been dominated by the corpora,

traditionalist recreational associations not dissimilar in style from American fraternities. These associations for the most part propagated the belief that the student body was an elite which should deliberately isolate itself from society at large. Next to the corpora there were general associations of students in particular faculties - these might form an ad hoc representative body for the entire student body on the university level. Bodies such as these in turn sent delegates to a national Nederlandse Studentenraad which was often consulted by the ministry of education on student matters. Since 1963 a new student unionism had begun to develop which attempted to organize students - particularly those outside the elitist corpora - on behalf of particular demands such as student housing, scholarships, and so on. Active members of this studentenvakbeweging began to contest student elections at faculty and university level. Its sympathizers eventually captured majorities in a sufficient number of universities to obtain a majority at the level of the Nederlandse Studentenraad. But the new student unions soon lost their organizational impetus and coherence, as a belief in direct democracy made them abolish earlier representative procedures in favor of amorphous mass assemblies which in turn fell prey to increasing dissension among different political and ideological factions: reformist democrats, Communists, anarchists, other revolutionary groupings, proponents of a new ‘underground’ culture, and so on.

Looked at in an international perspective, neither student ideologies nor student tactics were particularly original. Ideological writings were little but a somewhat turgid mixture of ideas derived from various new left and ‘underground’ movements in the United States, from the Parisian rhetoric of May 1968, and from German revolutionary writings. The latter were particularly influential at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, the university closest to the German border; the Studentenvakbeweging had originated there. For a long time student militancy was purely verbal, and even when militant actions erupted they hardly ever became violent. A critical event occurred in late April 1969 when a small group of militant students at Tilburg tried to press their demands for reforms in the structure of university government by occupying the telephone exchange of that university. The authorities at Tilburg reacted by closing the university. This led to mass occupation there and provoked a bout of similar actions at other universities. But once the initial enthusiasm wore off, disillusionment soon set in among most of the new recruits. Most eventually returned to their studies. Others dropped out and joined a new hippie culture. Only a few became quasi-professional agitators with a career lasting a number of years. Since Dutch student agitation was therefore not particularly original or persistent, its considerable impact must be explained by reference to other factors. These may be found in the particular condition of the Dutch universities, and in the larger changes taking place simultaneously in Dutch society.

Changes in the Structure of the Universities

Traditionally, Dutch universities tended to be the preserve of a small elite, catering for at most 3 percent of any age group. All teaching was in the hands of university professors or readers. There was almost no junior staff beyond an occasional student assistant. There was little planning of curricula or supervision of student progress. Most studies for a final degree took five to seven years at a minimum.

From the early 1960s onwards, the demand for university education soared, as a result of the high postwar birth rate, on the one hand, and growing interest in higher education among the relevant age groups, on the other. The number of full-time students registered rose from 40,000 in 1960 to over 100,000 in 1970. The increased numbers posed an entirely new challenge. Lecture rooms became crowded. Examinations became massive written affairs rather than the traditional oral examination of a single student by the professor in charge of a given field. More formal patterns of study were laid down, with clear specifications on courses to be followed and tests to be taken. New administrative controls by the university and the central government became necessary to cope with the soaring costs of higher education.

To meet growing demands, the cabinet decided deliberately to expand the existing institutions of higher learning - including the subsidized confessional universities - rather than to establish new institutions. The student bodies of the larger ones grew rapidly to between 15,000 and 20,000. A number of new professorships and readerships were established, but there was a much more rapid expansion of junior academic staff, who were ranked and paid according to civil service grades. These new staff members were in an anomalous and frustrating position. No clear criteria were established for their appointment, which rested on little but the personal preference of the holder of the chair. Promotion and permanent tenure usually followed after these staff members had served on temporary appointments for four years.

There was no particular efficiency bar of any kind. Neither a doctorate nor other special academic qualifications were needed, only the nomination of the holder of the chair to which these staff members were attached. At the same time, all formal teaching responsibilities, all setting of detailed examination requirements, and all other matters of university government remained the exclusive right of the full professors or curatoren only. In consequence of the expansion of the university, there were rapidly burgeoning staffs with little guarantee for their quality and without effective rights for their members.

As business mounted and numbers increased, the senate as constituted became unmanageable as an institution of university government. Day-to-day management of teaching and research matters at central university level became concentrated in a sort of representative executive body chosen from within it, usually consisting of the rector magnificus, the secretary of the senate, the deans of faculties, and a few professors selected at large. At the same time two contrary demands arose for further reforms. On the one hand, impatient professors and civil servants pleaded for a professionalization of university administration by full-time officials. On the other hand, junior staff members demanded a redistribution of authority along more egalitarian lines. Yet both the entrenched position of autonomous professors and the problematical qualifications of junior staff stood in the way of improvement.

Another paradox became visible simultaneously. On the one hand, structure of university government, fundamental requirements for degrees, procedures and criteria of professional appointments, and so on had traditionally been promulgated by explicit national legislation. On the other hand, actual authority within the universities remained with the autonomous holders of chairs and the relatively weak curatoren. New initiatives for curricular reform, for shortening academic courses of study, for changing the position of the junior staff were proposed at central government level. But there was no effective follow-up within the universities. The entire situation was ripe for an attack on two flanks - national intervention from above and rebellion from below, with the junior academic staff providing frustrated candidates for easy mobilization under the banner of reform.

The Challenge to Authority in Dutch Society

University reform by itself could conceivably have been settled through the time-honored procedures of reform committees and the introduction of piecemeal changes. Even the confluence of student agitation - largely under foreign influence - and demand for structural reforms - chiefly motivated by internal university friction - might still have had little impact were it not for the more fundamental political and social changes which were taking place simultaneously in Dutch society. The attack on vested interests in the universities coincided with an effective challenge to the tradition of rule by elites in the Netherlands.

The traditional forms of rule in Dutch society were not unlike the practices of university government. Just as the universities were administered by a body of prominent regents (curatoren) and the holders of professorial posts, so Dutch rule rested for centuries on a complex system of ‘offices,’

rather than on centralized rule by officials, on the one hand, or accountable representatives, on the other. Ministers, members of estates, provincial dignitaries, mayors or aldermen, and judges all tended to rule by inherent right. They often did so in a responsible manner, but they did not hold themselves accountable to the electorate or regard themselves as subservient to some central sovereign. Dutch rule tended to be pluralist, ‘accommodative,’ collegial, with little trust in concentration of power, or in the will of an electorate.

This system - originating in the structure of the Dutch Republic - had seen the development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of a strong system of segmentation along religious and other doctrinal lines, as Calvinists, Catholics, and socialists developed strongly organized cultures of their own. This had increased the possibility of mass participation, and introduced a new element of modern organizational life. Yet it did not supplant the older pluralism; in fact, it reinforced it as every culture sought to make sure of its ‘inherent and sovereign right’ to settle its own affairs. The system retained its abhorrence of unified power, and preference for ‘accommodative’ styles at the top, with a free hand for a plurality of leaders in their relations to one another and to their own followers. Elaborate rule by committee, sharing of power, carefully circumscribed regulation of common affairs with full preservation of the rights of autonomous cultures were the most characteristic feature of Dutch social life.7 It was this system which made it possible to have both national legislation in university matters and total dependence on central government financing - even of the private religious universities - while at the same time the autonomy of the universities in general, and of individual professors within them, was fully respected.

In recent years, however, this long-established and apparently stable system has come under great strain through a combination of factors.

The Change in Religious Cultures

Perhaps the single most important change has been the fundamental reorientation of the leadership of the churches - the Catholic church above all, but the Protestant churches as well. The churches had long been inward looking; their chief preoccupation was with sin, salvation, and eternity. In worldly life they were well satisfied to keep the faithful together through a

system of strong social control. As Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants encompassed more than half of Dutch society, the religious cultures were the natural props of a stable social order. Socialists and liberals knew themselves to be minority movements which could only hope for a role in government if the religious parties were willing to enter into a coalition with them. This forced them into sober and moderate positions.

In recent years, however, revolutionary changes have occurred in the outlook of clergy and laity alike. A desire to break out of their isolation, to bring the lessons of the gospel to this world, to intervene actively in its structure and operation, to concern oneself with man's immediate condition and not only his ultimate destiny, came to replace the formerly conservative outlook of many of the religious leaders. The religious universities tended to be the center of this movement, with students, lecturers, and some individual professors forming its vanguard. As a result, the tight unity of the religious cultures was broken. Many of the new evangelical radicals were as confident of their newly won insights as they had once been of theological dogma. Others showed no such certainty, and split into moderate reformers and fundamentalist keepers of the old faith. Dissension among the leaders made the religious cultures lose their monolithic hold. The masses began to waver between conservative reaction, intellectual disorientation, and growing indifference. In three successive elections the total strength of the three larger religious parties declined from 49.2 percent of the national vote in 1963 to 31.3 percent in 1972.

The Emergence of the Socialist ‘New Left’

The disarray of the religious cultures coincided with considerable changes in the socialist left. In the postwar decades the socialist movement had steered a pragmatic course, its leaders being absorbed in practical action at central or local government levels. This mode of action proved insufficiently inspiring for a new political generation, once Vietnam destroyed confidence in Western supremacy. The success of postwar reconstruction policies made economic welfare issues a matter of secondary concern - or even a negative item in the romantic revulsion against a hedonistic society which destroyed the environment in pursuit of materialistic values. ‘New left’ forces, in which students and young academic staff members were again particularly prominent, set out to capture leading positions in the Labor party. They possessed strong resources: ideological fervor, articulateness, and ample free time - the latter a rare resource in a country where the few professional politicians were usually occupied with political work in local or central government, and where other citizens were very lukewarm about politics.

The Demand for Democratization

Both the socialist new left forces and the new religious radicals began in an emphatic manner to pose challenges to the existing political regime. Instead of the older accommodative style of the elite at the top, they demanded direct participatory democracy from the base. They challenged the tradition of coalition politics by demanding opportunities for direct electoral choice. Many campaigned for the introduction of a system of a directly elected prime minister or elected mayors. All desired a reorientation of the party system in such a manner that mutually exclusive groups would contend against one another for a direct electoral mandate. They not only became active in existing institutional channels, but they also had recourse on numerous occasions to the tactics of direct action.

These new developments coincided with a rather fundamental change in the mass media. Both newspapers and wireless networks had traditionally been closely allied with particular political and religious groups. These ties were increasingly severed, however, as the social cohesion of these groups declined, as the economics of newspaper production led to mergers and less ‘exclusivist’ newspapers, and as television began to break up the fairly closed communication networks which had existed previously. A new type of yellow press - and somewhat comparable television broadcasting - emerged. At the same time, the socialist and religious organs tended to move increasingly towards the left. There were three causes for this. The more innovative intellectual movements were oriented towards the left. The media were to a considerable extent - and television almost exclusively - in the hands of younger journalists who shared the outlook of the newer generation. These new elements possessed color and an air of conviction, unlike the more prosaic representatives of intricate and incrementalist rule.

The Reaction of the Older Elites

The Dutch political elites were confronted by a series of unwonted challenges. They faced a large number of groups employing the tactics of direct action which were magnified by radio and television coverage. Television cameras exposed political leaders to new forms of direct access, whereas in the past they had conducted their business in relatively sheltered committees. They faced, moreover, an increasingly volatile electorate. These new developments undermined the tight organizational structures of Dutch society, and made politics less calculable. This caused considerable uncertainty within the elite and as a result accentuated electoral instability. As long as strong institutional structures had given the older elites a secure base, they could afford to greet such challenges with disdain. When these

crumbled - or were thought to crumble - they acted diffidently in the face of the demands of the ‘new democracy.’8

The Universities as a Microcosm of Dutch Society

The revolutionary changes in Dutch university government since 1969 may be viewed as a process internal to the universities, where an effective onslaught on an existing elite has occurred; this process in its turn should be seen as part of the larger changes in society.

The demands for university reform which were put forward by students and members of the lower ranks of the teaching staff - separately or in coalition - closely resembled demands for participatory democracy expressed elsewhere. They ranged from a minimum of representation for students and teachers in existing governing bodies to the introduction of ‘one man-one vote’ systems and government by general assembly. The first effective challenges took place in the religious universities, notably the Catholic institutions at Tilburg and Nijmegen. But in May 1969 they spread like wildfire from one university campus to another when agitating students confronted senates and curatoren with ultimata. These demands were often accompanied by flamboyant but mainly symbolic occupations of university buildings. The initiative came from small minorities, but the

exhilaration of sentiment and romanticism of outlook soon led to enthusiastic participation by larger numbers.

The demands of the students did not meet with a coherent front of the teaching staff or with consistent attitudes on the part of curatoren or even the minister. The curatoren wavered between stern measures and conciliatoriness, giving little guidance to an equally uncertain academic staff. The latter was itself divided in more than one way. There was a considerable chasm between the full professors and younger staff, since the latter had no direct responsibility and could mainly gain from such changes as were likely to be introduced. Individual professors, departments, and faculties were accustomed to operate on their own. They often averted their eyes from trouble elsewhere, believing that they could weather the storm better if they worked out their own solutions. Thus the traditional aloofness and autonomy of Dutch university life prevented the development of strong links of solidarity within any given university, or among universities.

For these reasons university reform was very diffuse from the outset. Curatoren and senates agreed in principle to some form of partnership with junior academic staff members, representatives of the nonacademic staff, and student leaders, by admitting them to governing bodies as members or observers, and by establishing committees to look into the need for further structural reform. At the same time, individual faculties, departments, and professors - and even some university institutions as a whole - went further, in some instances yielding authority to general assemblies in which all individuals - professors, junior lecturers, students, secretaries, and porters - could cast an equal vote on all matters.

Such developments led to curious realignments within the universities. Two vague blocs were formed. The first consisted of once sturdy proponents of the established order which suddenly became apprehensive and joined with outright protagonists of democratic reform to plead for far-reaching concessions to militant students. The other comprised the outspoken traditionalists, and a number of erstwhile reformers who had earlier pleaded unsuccessfully for fundamental reorganization of the universities but who now refused to jump into the dark under duress and intimidation. The former spoke of the need for democracy and of a new social role for the universities, the latter pointed to the dangers to academic freedom and intellectual standards.

A series of lengthy struggles followed. Upon these student agitators, those junior academic staff members in coalition with them, university authorities, and individual professors brought very different resources to bear. If the latter had the backing of an admittedly crumbling legal authority, the former had the precious resources of the absence of direct responsibility and of ample free time. Eventually, many university authorities began to yield, possibly in the hope of preserving good personal relations with opposite partners, or perhaps simply to get out of the wrangle of interminable meetings which interfered with their normal work - and which in

some cases began to threaten their health as much as their happiness. Occasionally, there may have been deliberate ambiguity. Many of the curatoren were relatively old men who knew that they were not likely to return to administrative office under a new university regime. They may have offered token concessions to buy time. They may have done so with more conviction because they expected that the cabinet would eventually have to step in anyhow to impose some degree of order in an increasingly chaotic situation.

In the larger Dutch society, student demands for university reform fell on fairly favorable soil. Although there was some popular revulsion against too militant student actions - notably, the occupation in May 1969 of the Maagdenhuis, the administrative center of the University of Amsterdam - student actions received considerable publicity and often a sympathetic press. Paradoxically, student activists benefited from two seemingly contradictory images: they were both an elite and underdogs. Society had long been tolerant about student frolics, such as traditional initiation rites. So why not applaud students when their antics now concerned more serious matters such as university reform or a reorientation of an unworldly university enclave towards active involvement with a changing world? In a struggle between students and professors, the latter could easily be pictured as the defenders of authoritarian privileges. The expansion in their number had whittled down the strong prestige which university professors had carried in less volatile days. And mutual denunciation and dissension did further damage to their status.

Differential access to the new media may have been a further factor. Student activism provided more news, and students knew better how to exploit the strategic weapon of publicity. When the universities suddenly became a continuous source of dramatic news, some newspapers and radio and television networks recruited student activists as reporters. Professors, however, had traditionally conducted university affairs in confidentiality, and they continued to regard the activities of the news media as improper intrusions into the internal affairs of the universities. They put their trust in traditional procedures and regulations, and often hesitated to bring conflicts into the open for fear the main effect would be the disruption of their immediate environment.

The Intervention of the Central Government

The rapid and disorderly flow of events in the universities presented the political parties with a difficult dilemma. Articulate spokesmen in favor of university reform - notably, young members of the academic staff - were often as active in political parties as they were in their own universities.

Youth in the Netherlands had generally achieved greater prominence

and visibility, and the prospective lowering of the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen promised to augment their voting power. Public opinion polls began to show a marked shift of younger voters towards the left. This concerned the religious parties - the main prospective losers - as much as the left parties which stood to gain from this trend. The cabinet could not avoid seeing a rapid erosion of the existing legal constitution of the universities. It was confronted by demands from the left for replacement of the existing university law by a blanket provision which would permit every sort of democratic experiment.

The minister eventually stepped in. On June 27, 1969, he presented a memorandum (Note Bestuurshervorming van de Universiteiten en Hogescholen) to parliament in which he outlined a number of principles for the reform of university government. It would be necessary, so read the memorandum,9 to insure the participation of all members of the university community in university decision making, and to see to it that the university also fulfilled the task - ascribed to it in Article 2 of the Higher Education Act of 1960 - of promoting a sense of social responsibility. Hence, each unit of the university should be as autonomous as possible. Professors, junior academic staff, nonacademic staff, students, and representatives of society at large should henceforth jointly decide on university matters, though not necessarily in arithmetically equal proportions at every level of university government.

The minister agreed that direct democracy might be an ideal form of making decisions in the smallest unit, and that general university assemblies could serve a useful function for purposes of discussion and information, but actual university government could be based only on the principle of representative democracy. New organs of university government should not follow the principle of ‘one man-one vote.’ This principle, argued Dr. Veringa, was purely formal and schematic and implied that the university was a mere sum of individuals, and not an organization of persons and groups, each of which had its own place, task, and responsibility. Democratic accountability should be insured by public meetings of representative organs and by public access to all documents, except those which would involve personal interests. The old division between curatoren and the senate should be replaced by a new undivided university administration which would be responsible for the whole field of education, research, and administration. Authority at the top should be divided among a university council and an executive board composed of full-time experienced administrators, chosen partly from inside, partly from outside the university. The board should have powers of its own on certain matters and should share powers in other

matters - notably in those involving the budget, planning, and general university government - with the university council. At the same time it would be important to work for greater unity of the academic corps by diminishing the distinction between full professors and other ranks. Finally, the memorandum laid out a schedule by which reforms could be introduced in phases.

Following the presentation of this memorandum, the education committee of the lower house held a number of public hearings on October 8, 10, and 23, 1969, and the house extensively debated the situation in the universities during the four-day debates on the budget of the ministry of education in November 1969. On February 17, 1970, the minister promulgated a draft of a bill embodying his views. This was followed on April 27, 1970, by the introduction in parliament of the bill itself.10 An elaborate written exchange11 took place between the minister and the lower house in preparation for the public debates. These ran from September 22 to 24 - with the relationship of the executive board and the university council and the amount of freedom for further experimentation beyond the framework of the bill providing the chief bones of contention. The lower house eventually passed the bill by 64 votes to 44, and the upper house did the same on December 8 by 51 votes against 16.12 The bill received royal assent the following day, and it became the basic law of university government for the next five and a half years. The left opposition parties had voted against the bill in the lower house on the ground that they deemed it insufficiently democratic.

The University Government Reorganization Act at Work

The application of the new law began in 1971, when the period of most acute conflict in the universities was over. The struggles of 1969 and 1970 had left an atmosphere of weariness, and many prominent protagonists on both sides had withdrawn from active battle. Untold numbers of meetings were necessary at all levels to carry out the act. They attracted little attention beyond the circle of persons most directly concerned. Yet the details of the process were vital, because they concerned nothing less than the establishment of new organs of university government. The discussions were shot through with political controversy, even though they lacked some of the

color and excitement of the more direct confrontations and struggles of the preceding years.

The application of the law was further complicated by having to start from very different situations. In some places the old legal structures had remained fully effective until the day on which the act came into force. To this day, the traditional structure lingers, notably in faculties such as medicine or science where the new democracy demanded in matters of teaching and research lives uneasily with the hierarchical structures of large clinics and laboratories. In other departments and faculties - and even in certain of the universities - new structures had been worked out independently in ways which went much beyond the provisions of the new law. Here the beneficiaries of the new distribution of power found it undesirable - and those who had reluctantly conceded the new forms found it distasteful and politically hazardous - to bring the new situation into conformity with the University Government Reorganization Act.

The Principles of Parity and of Minimum Guarantees for Academic Staff

In the early days of the struggle in 1969, many university authorities had conceded the principle of parity in representative bodies. This decision - which went beyond the minister's memorandum of the end of June 1959 - was based on the assumption that there would be at least five distinct ‘corps,’ each of which would be given an equal voice in university affairs: curatoren, full professors and readers, the academic staff below these grades, nonacademic personnel, and students. Because curatoren went into eclipse soon afterwards, and because professors and lower ranking teachers were merged eventually into the one undivided corps of the academic staff, the number of distinct constituent bodies was in practice reduced to three. If the parity principle were applied, the proportion of the nonacademic staff and of the students in governing councils would each increase automatically from one fifth to one third. The University Government Reorganization Act - though endorsing the principle that there would be three constituent corps only - qualified the full force of the principles of parity, as it descended from the higher organs of university government to the lower levels which were charged with particular teaching programs. It stipulated that the academic staff should have a minimum of one third of the elected members of the university council, at least one half of the seats in the faculty council, and the majority of the seats in the educational and research committees; it gave staff on permanent appointment automatic membership in the vakgroep boards and reserved the membership of examination committees to them; it stipulated that each examination committee should

include at least one professor or reader; and it required that deans of faculties and chairmen of vakgroep boards be chosen from the ranks of full professors or readers only.

Minimum Guarantees as Maximum Claims

In the application of the act, the clear intention of these stipulations was often reversed. Guaranteed minima were often interpreted as maximal limits, so that the representation of the academic staff was reduced to the absolute minimum prescribed in the act. Several factors accounted for this development.

The act was applied from the top down: the university councils were established first, the faculty councils later, the faculty committees and vakgroep boards last. As the higher bodies set the more general ‘laws’ - and also had to approve the rules of lower organs - the more powerful position of students and nonacademic staff in the higher bodies was easily extended to lower bodies, occasionally by imposition from above, more often by simple preemption from below.

Academic staff members were often hesitant to press their claims, lest they damage the possibility of good personal relations with student and nonacademic staff and their representatives. The academic staff rarely acted in concert on behalf of its own claims in any university. During the passage of the bill in parliament, the minister had defended the need for a guaranteed minimum in the representation of the academic staff by the argument that ‘decisions should rest on the authority of those professionally responsible.’ The argument rested on the premise that the academic corps would vote as one on vital matters. What often happened, however, was the formation of relatively coherent voting coalitions of student representatives and some academic staff members, with the remainder of the academic staff representatives in opposition, and the nonacademic staff representatives in an ambiguous position between them.

This tendency became more marked once partisan groups entered elections in one university after another with the contention that democratic university government should rest on particular views about the social functions of a modern university - views which might be shared by teachers, nonacademic staff, and students alike - rather than on special responsibilities which distinguished teachers from students. The partisan groups were organized across the boundaries of the different constituent corps - unlike other candidates for election who sought votes within their own corps only - and they often showed greater cohesion. Groups of this type often obtained a majority in university councils and faculty councils. Generally, their electoral platform demanded a maximum extension of the democratic

principle in university government. In practice, this meant a reduction in the numbers of the academic staff, and in principle an increase in the representation of nonacademic staff and students alike. Usually, however, the latter benefited most.

The position was further complicated by the weak position of the nonacademic staff in certain faculties. Especially in the arts and the social sciences, they had too few members to be able to claim more than an occasional seat, and in many instances these staff groups did not even claim seats to which they were entitled. The resulting vacancies could have been allotted to the academic staff, to student representatives, or to both. But, when the guaranteed minima of the act were interpreted as maximal limits for the academic staff, this made it possible to increase student representation. In faculty councils and faculty committees in these faculties, students thus came close to having a majority. At the same time, the potential value of the parity principle was not forgotten. Thus the faculty executives almost automatically came to be composed of representatives of all categories. Although the deans had to be chosen from full professors or readers, junior academic staff and students were also given guaranteed places, so that faculty executives often came to have a majority of relatively young and inexperienced personnel.

The Governing Councils of Departments of Sociology and History

In certain faculties and departments the situation has gone even further. A survey of the governing councils of the departments of sociology in the Netherlands in November 1973 reveals the following picture. In no university do members of the academic staff have more than a bare majority or half of the seats; and in three institutions - Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Utrecht - they have not even this (see Table 1). In the University of Amsterdam, supreme authority lies in principle with a general assembly, which elects a steering committee; the committee is presided over by a junior staff member without permanent tenure.

A similar experiment in direct democracy undertaken in the Leiden Department of Sociology in 1969 faded out when the general assembly and its executive council eventually withered through lack of student interest. By February 1971 only twelve candidates offered themselves for the twelve places on the department council. Only one of them was a student - a military man on study leave who is alleged to have asked his superiors' permission to stand for election. The general assembly then decided to abolish itself, and after a while the department returned to a structure not dissimilar from that envisaged in the act. Of the six elected members of

TABLE 1. Governing Councils of Departments of Sociology
(Autumn 1973)
University Number of Member of Academic Staff Non-Academic Staff Number of Student Representatives
Leiden 6 2 4
Groningen 11 1 10
Utrecht 7 2 7a
Amsterdamb 5 1 5
Rotterdam 6 6 6
Free University Amsterdam 6 - 5
Nijmegen 12c 3 9
Tilburg 8 2 6a
the academic staff, only two have permanent tenure. In two other departments of sociology - Utrecht and Tilburg - students formally boycott existing councils under the pressure of groups of militant students who prefer direct agitation to the representative process.

The situation in the history departments is not very different from that in sociology (see Table 2). In three departments the situation in 1973 was in direct violation of the act: in Groningen, Amsterdam, and Utrecht. In Groningen, seats on the governing council are divided into four categories: six seats for the academic corps elected by specialists in each of six subfields, six student representatives, one member of the nonacademic staff, and five seats at large under a system of one man-one vote. In view of the large number of students, it should come as no surprise that at the last elections four of these seats were won by students and one seat by a member of the academic staff, thus making for a majority of ten students over seven staff members. Formally, the council is in charge of ‘general policy,’ with staff members responsible for the ‘execution’ of its decisions. But conflicts are emerging over the demarcation of these nebulous dividing lines.

The Amsterdam history department formally instituted a general assembly, and four subassemblies for subfields; in these, decisions were to be taken on the principle of one man-one vote. These various assemblies have practically died and decisions tend now to be taken in an executive council composed of twelve staff members, twelve students, and two nonacademic staff members. The subfield assemblies must now be converted into vakgroep boards and this leads to considerable conflict between the staff and

TABLE 2. Governing Councils of Departments of History
(Autumn 1973)
University Number of Member of Academic Staff Number of Members of Non-Academic Staff Number of Student Representatives
Leiden 8 - 7
Groningena 7 1 10
Utrechtb 9 3 9
Amsterdamc 12 2 12
Free University Amsterdam 6 - 5
Nijmegen 12d - 12
militant students. In Utrecht, the Historical Institute is governed by an institute council of nine members of the academic staff, three members of the nonacademic staff, and nine students. This arrangement conflicts with the act's requirement that the academic staff should have at least one half of the seats. To meet this objection, a formal assembly has been established - composed of all staff members (two thirds) and students (one third) - which meets once a year to endorse decisions of the council of the institute.

A comparison of the departments of history and sociology shows that almost everywhere the academic staff has been reduced to its absolute legal minimum and sometimes well below it. In contrast, student power has been pushed to the maximum limits of the act in practically all places, and in some departments beyond these. History departments have had less strife than sociology departments. The reasons for this are various. Departments of history are very much smaller than departments of sociology and have expanded more gradually. Personal relations between staff and students have remained closer and more friendly and revolutionary students have not attained critical numbers as easily as in sociology departments. History is the older academic discipline. Professional standards are more clearly established. Recruitment for professorships is based on stiffer competition and the successful candidates have more solid achievements. There are also differences in the professional ambitions of students. A history professor is likely to encounter in most of his students future teachers of history - if not archivists. A sociology professor, on the other hand, is frequently confronted

by students who, from the secure base of the university, demand social ‘action’ and ‘revolution,’ and show little interest in theory or research and little love for books except those which could reinforce a priori beliefs. Standards in the writing of history are more widely shared between professors, junior staff members, and students - whatever their political persuasion or choice of subject. But the situation in a number of history departments remains delicately poised. If conflicts have not raged as fiercely as in sociology, this is not because history departments have had more effective arrangements for governing themselves or greater cohesion of their teaching staff, but because there has been so far less effective challenge.

Appointments Committees and ‘Vakgroep’ Boards: Minimizing the Special Claims of Rank and Tenure

In principle, Article 12, 2 of the University Government Reorganization Act reserved membership on appointments committees for professorships or readerships to full professors and readers, but it also contained the clause that the faculty council might add ‘other experts.’ Although the minister had stated explicitly that students or nonacademic staff members could be regarded as experts only if they possessed demonstrable special knowledge in the particular field in which appointment was to be made, many faculty councils chose to give this their own interpretation. Students were held to be experts simply because they had an interest in the selection of good professors. Who could judge better than students whether candidates had pedagogical ability? Student participation in appointments committees, it was argued, would guarantee that proper procedures were followed and that the committees would make their decisions on the basis of merit rather than under the influence of an esprit de clique. Because a single student was held to be too isolated - both in the committee and in his relation to his fellow students - the Leiden Faculty of Letters decided in 1971 that as a matter of principle appointments committees should have two advanced students as members. In circumstances such as these, the inclusion of academic staff members below the rank of professor or reader was a foregone conclusion. In some, appointments committees for professorships have as a result not even had a majority of professors or readers. Needless to say, such arrangements have not guaranteed that the criterion of merit would dominate: as future junior colleagues or students, committee members might very well have a personal stake in the appointment or nonappointment of particular persons, for reasons other than academic qualifications.

The act does not regulate the procedure of appointing junior academic staff members. This has made it possible to establish appointments com-

mittees for junior grades in which academic staff members have only half the number of seats, or even less. One of the history departments recently established an appointments committee, composed of three students and three staff members. One candidate was preparing a dissertation on Marcel Proust; none of the ‘expert’ student judges had heard of Proust.

As for the vakgroep boards, the decision to include or not to include representatives of the academic staff without permanent tenure, of nonacademic staff, and of students was left to the discretion of the faculty councils, although the permanent core of academics with permanent tenure was, in the minister's view, to carry the chief responsibility. Again, this intention of the act has often been evaded. Student representatives could qualify on the ground of ‘the contribution they made to the work of the vakgroep’; this was thought to be true of any student who prepared himself for special examinations in a given subject. Academic staff without permanent tenure could be added through elected representatives. Democracy was thought to require that all should automatically become members of the vakgroep boards. The component of permanent staff members was generally reduced, on the basis of an incidental reference in the explanatory memorandum which accompanied the act, to about half the seats in the vakgroep boards. But in the University of Amsterdam the university council went beyond this in drafting the university rules. Democracy required, in its view, that all academic staff members, whether on permanent tenure or not, should have equal rights. Jointly, they were to have half the seats of the vakgroep boards; the remainder of the seats were then to be taken up by students and the nonacademic staff. If the latter were few in number, this could result in an increase of the number of student representatives to almost one half. Not only on the level of the faculty councils, therefore, but also in the most crucial activities of the academic staff - in teaching, setting examination requirements, and research - students acquired considerable power. They could gain the decisive voice if they could unite with only a few members of the academic staff. It is expected that the minister of education will refuse to approve this particular clause in the Amsterdam University rules. In the meantime it has resulted in considerable friction on the academic staff between those who went along and those who resisted. Such wounds do not heal easily.

The special position of academic staff members on permanent tenure in the vakgroep boards has been used as an argument in many faculties outside Amsterdam not to establish these professional groups at all. Thus, in none of the sociology departments mentioned above have vakgroep boards been officially constituted. There is either bitter conflict about this matter or the faculty councils have avoided touching the issue. The situation in the departments of history is similar. Only one department - in Leiden - has formally constituted vakgroep boards. Their membership comprises an equal number of academic staff and students.

The Personnel of the Governing Bodies

Different principles and procedures prevail in the selection of personnel for the different bodies:

The larger part of the university council, all faculty councils, and the elected representatives of vakgroep boards are elected by and from the different constituent bodies; the usual system is proportional representation, with a single tranferable vote. This encourages the presentation of lists, but leaves individual voters free to express a preference for persons rather than parties.13

Executive posts are filled by council election. Thus the university council elects two members of the executive board, and the faculty councils choose the faculty executive and establish all other committees. If a faculty is divided into subfaculties, the different voting groups elect the subfaculty councils and these elect their representatives to the faculty council by simple majority vote.

Membership of some other bodies follows ex officio. Thus the rector magnificus is automatically a member of the executive board; the elected deans of faculties automatically form the board of deans; all academic staff members on permanent tenure belong automatically to their vakgroep boards.

Finally, certain important positions are filled by appointment. by the Crown. The Crown appoints a minimum of one sixth of the members of the university council, the rector magnificus, and two members of the executive board. But, in drawing up proposals for such appointments by the Crown, the minister of education is under pressure from many forces. He receives nominations from the elected members of the university council for the Crown appointees to that body. As the number of nominees may be equal to the number of posts to be filled, this procedure can in practice imply cooptation by the sitting members of the university council. The minister has to choose the rector magnificus from a list of two nominees presented by the board of deans, and he can do little but choose the top candidate. He has more freedom in the selection of the two Crown members of the executive board of the university. But in this matter, too, university councils have actively pressed their will, by seeking candidates of their own

who are then presented to the minister for appointment, or by expressing a strong preference for one ministerial nominee rather than any other.

These varied and complex procedures create a number of political problems. These include the following:

The Minimum Threshold

The Act prescribes that seats may be filled only if a minimum of 35 percent of all eligible voters of a particular constituent corps cast their votes. Academic and nonacademic staff have usually had turnouts considerably higher than this minimum.14 The record of students has been more checkered. During the first elections for the university council in 1971, but also in a number of particular faculty elections since then, radical students. called a boycott as they deemed the provisions of the University Government Reorganization Act insufficiently democratic. As other students came forward only hesitantly, or not at all, the minimum was not attained and in such cases the student seats on elected bodies were not all filled. Radical students resorted instead to demonstrations; they occupied university buildings when specific demands were not met, and occasionally they sought to intimidate and disrupt public meetings of the elected bodies through mass attendance with banners and even with bullhorns. Elected councils with minimal or no representation of student members have often felt less legitimate because of their absence. Many of the members leaned over backwards to prove by their actions that students had every reason to take their constitutionally provided positions in such friendly organs. In the elections of 1973 for the university councils, radical student groups generally gave up their boycott and systematically put forward candidates for the available seats. They often won such elections by large margins, not least because other student groups remained inactive.

Election by Nomination

The University Government Reorganization Act was based on the assumption that many individuals and groups were anxious to participate in university government. The actual record has tended to belie this assumption. The number of candidates coming forward for the fairly large number of elective places to be filled has tended to be small. The composition of the elected bodies has often depended on accidents of nomination and has not been the result of spirited contests between eager candidates. Small groups

which nominate candidates in sufficient numbers can win by default. Elections offer, therefore, little guarantee of representativeness. Nevertheless, they confer definite powers to persons thus fortuitously selected.

The Selection of Other Personnel by the Elected Bodies

Those who are empowered to designate, or nominate, persons for particular executive office are often markedly influenced by partisan considerations. Groups enjoying majorities in the university councils have used their voting power to nominate the outside persons with whom they are politically sympathetic for appointment by the Crown. Thus they strengthen their voting position in the university council, even beyond the next election. They have similarly tried - often successfully - to reserve the elective positions in the executive board for persons who share their general political and social outlook; they have also sought to resist the appointment of the Crown-designated candidates for the executive board if they do not find them politically congenial. Similar practices have occasionally been employed in the selection of faculty executives and even in the election of deans. Although the dean must be a full professor, his election is by simple majority of the faculty council; this majority need not coincide with the majority of the elected members of the academic staff.

The Superior Claim of the Elective Principle

The legitimate force of the elective principle has been used as an argument to reduce the role of the board of deans as an advisory organ, to proclaim the sovereignty of the university council in all university matters, and to diminish the independent powers of the executive board.

The relationship between university councils which are mainly elected and executive boards which are composed by a complex combination of election, nomination, and appointment, has consequently tended to be somewhat tense and precarious. They must collaborate since they often have concurrent powers. The councils claim constitutional supremacy, the boards special responsibilities. But the boards may not be internally homogeneous, and they have often proved to be somewhat timid and ambivalent, whenever they anticipate possible trouble.

The Lack of Continuity of Personnel

The elected councils have met with two further difficulties. Their personnel has been almost entirely new, and in the few years of their function-

ing there has been little continuity even among the elected academic staff members who are on permanent tenure in the university. Therefore, members often have little intimate knowledge of past events, nor are they directly responsible for the future consequences of their decisions. Understandably, they have often wavered between deliberate indecision and sudden flurries of uneasy decision making.

Attendance has been irregular. The making of decisions has therefore often been assured only by the requirement of a small quorum. This means in practice that there has been no definite guarantee of effective continuity of personnel in any given council, even from one meeting to another.15

Faculty Councils, Teaching, and Examination Responsibilities

In the relationship between the newly established faculty councils and the day-to-day teaching activities of the academic staff, two conflicting trends are emerging. On the one hand, there is an increasing separation between the two. In the faculties before 1969, the automatic membership of all full professors guaranteed a direct link between faculty decision and immediate teaching responsibilities. Such a link no longer exists. There is, therefore, no continuous communication among different fields. Many staff members increasingly concentrate only on their respective fields, and show little interest beyond them. Faculty councils and teaching staffs are thus becoming more remote from each other. On the other hand, some very active faculty councils demand comprehensive curricular reforms, as well as changes in particular fields. In these circumstances a fundamental conflict is emerging about the ultimate responsibility for power over teaching and examinations.

The demands of radical council members have different sources. Some simply have to do with instruction: students may want fewer lectures and more seminars and ad hoc projects as part of their training. Others have to do with questions of the amount of work: students may wish for changes in examination requirements - usually a lowering, sometimes a shift, in emphasis. Faculty councils sometimes use their power to settle old accounts:

the formerly complete autonomy of individual professors occasionally led to idiosyncratic and possibly unjust situations which can now be effectively challenged. Often the demand for reform is motivated by political concerns. Certain staff members and students on the faculty council somtimes seek a fundamental political reorientation, demanding the elimination of less fashionable parts from the curriculum, and the substitution of more politically pertinent fields, topics, or reading lists.

These issues are raised in a complex legal setting. In 1960 new legislation charged the faculties with the ‘arrangement and proper progress of instruction.’ This phrase was held to empower existing faculties to override, if necessary, the special authority of the holders of individual chairs in setting requirements for particular fields. This was done on the assumption that the assembly of the full professors of an individual faculty was likely to exercise better and fairer judgment than an interested professor in a particular field making a decision without regard for the views of his peers. Such authority was in practice used only sparingly and only in answer to evident abuse. The new University Government Reorganization Act transferred most powers of the previous faculty meetings to the new faculty councils, without at the same time transmitting the guarantees of academic learning and experience which the earlier faculties had possessed. It abolished the relevant article of the Higher Education Act and substituted a new clause, which entrusted the faculty council with ‘the organization and coordination of teaching and research’ in the fields belonging to that faculty. It also laid down that the degree programs in particular fields were to be submitted to interuniversity committees, which operate under the aegis of the interuniversity Academic Council. Faculties continue to be bound, moreover, to the general framework of the academic statute which lays down which subjects must be studied for particular degrees. Therefore, the law reasoned - as does Dutch educational organization, in general - in terms of collective authority and requirements, rather than of the individual discretion of teacher or students. Moreover, it replaced the earlier dual relationship of faculty and full professor by a quadripartite relationship of faculty council, vakgroep, individual teacher, and interuniversity committees of the Academic Council. It gave no clear indication for the resolution of conflicting claims about the modes and content of teaching and examinations.

Use or Misuse of the Powers of Faculty Councils

Reforming elements in certain faculty councils have resorted to a number of different procedures to impose their will on particular groups of teachers. The easiest way has been to set definite limits on the teaching and reading load in a particular field, through some quasi-objective standards

such as number of lecture hours, total pages to be read, and so on. A more drastic weapon has been interference with content: specific vakgroepen were obliged to consult students about reading lists, and to accept their demands in whole or in part.16 In more extreme cases, notably in faculties of social sciences, faculty councils have gone further and fashioned vakgroepen according to their own taste. Article 17 of the act, which makes the faculty councils responsible for the establishment of vakgroepen, has thus been interpreted as providing a mandate for the complete reallocation of personnel and responsibilities irrespective of scholarly qualifications and disciplinary specialization. In other cases, councils have refused to create vakgroepen altogether, thus substituting their own power for that of professional specialists. When the latter resisted, the councils have sidestepped them by a combination of further measures - for example, by charging a few cooperative teachers with sole authority to examine in that particular field, by packing examination committees with sympathetic staff members who would grant degrees against the will of professors or vakgroepen,17 and by using their powers of appointment for junior staff as well as their nomination rights for professorships and readerships to change the physiognomy of a faculty. When faced with such action, some academic staff members have appealed to higher authority within their university, or to the committees of the interuniversity Academic Council to resist these developments. They have, however, met with little immediate response. Executive boards have argued that they have no authority in particular teaching matters. The Academic Council also has only consultative powers and, furthermore, is undergoing a thorough transformation of membership. Initially, the various sections of the Academic Council were thought to be the repositories of expertise in a special discipline. When faced with unwelcome opinions, faculty councils have increasingly tried to replace professional members with

their own closely instructed delegates, who now may be students, in addition to academic staff members. Only a few hardy persons have continued their struggles against these heavy odds. But, in many cases, those once professionally responsible have simply conceded defeat; they have gone along with the new regime or withdrawn from all activity except official teaching assignments.

The Appointment of Academic Staff

The most basic problem of academic appointments had been the complete lack of rights of the junior academic staff coupled with the absence of clear criteria for their appointment. The University Government Reorganization Act considerably improved the first of these conditions. The substitution of vakgroep boards for the monopoly of the professor gave the academic staff below the rank of professor or reader independent responsibility and a share in collective decision making. This provided the possibility of a wider spread of academic capacities and responsibilities, and left less scope for the possible idiosyncrasies of the professor who had formerly enjoyed a monopolistic position. However, the new act failed to remedy another fault. The staffs of Dutch universities fall in principle under civil service regulations which require appointment to permanent tenure of temporary staff after a stipulated number of years - normally, four years for academic staff. Under the old structure the junior academic staff were fully dependent on the holder of the chair to which they were attached. Professors could nominate their assistants for permanent appointment or propose a termination of their contract at will, without having to offer substantial proof of their academic qualities.

The new democracy has tended to strengthen the demand of junior staff for permanent tenure, not least because the new University Government Reorganization Act gave staff members on permanent appointment a special position. The replacement of the powers of the holder of the professorial chair by those of the vakgroep board extended the responsiblities for the academic ranks below professors and readers and brought a new group into decisions on tenure and promotion; it did nothing, however, to provide for new guarantees of academic quality. In many vakgroep boards only a tiny minority of staff members have a doctorate. As time served in temporary appointments rather than proven intellectual excellence is generally the basis for granting tenure, the special place which the act assigned to staff members on permanent tenure in vakgroep boards and in examination committees does not offer very firm assurance on this matter. The effect of this is even more pronounced when the permanent staff is given only a marginal majority over other representatives in the vakgroep boards.

The government is not unaware of this problem, and new rules for academic careers are being drawn up centrally. But in the meantime the permanent staffing of Dutch universities without clear criteria of qualification goes on. It carries with it two possible dangers. Intellectual quality may sink while responsibilities become more dispersed; this may mean a mortgage on the future of the university which will last a generation or more. And for a government in search of economies this very circumstance threatens to become an alibi to engage in a drastic reorganization of the pattern of university teaching. Occasionally, one hears pleas for the separation of responsibilities for research and teaching. The lower academic ranks would then be destined for persons who are exclusively teachers employed full time and who would work mainly in the junior years much like secondary school teachers. Such a reform might lead to a fundamental degradation of academic life, both in the kinds of teaching offered in different grades and in the kinds of persons recruited.

The Political Element in Appointments

As elsewhere in the Western world, there are vociferous demands in the Netherlands for a ‘politicization’ of the university. These demands, often expressed openly, are sometimes dressed in the garb of the need for ‘new scientific approaches.’ As a result, political criteria have begun to enter into appointments, in at least three different ways. There is first the argument of ‘balance.’ Whether as a result of outside pressure or internal anticipation, certain vakgroepen go out of their way to find candidates who represent particular ideologies. One may now find occasional advertisements by a school of education demanding ‘an expert on Marxist economics’ or find a department of sociology seeking a ‘critical sociologist’ - the reference presumably being to the ideological orientation of the ‘Frankfurt school,’ without the guarantee of the intellectual qualities of some of the leaders of that group in the past. When demands for such appointments are resisted, their advocates employ the argument of ‘pluralism’ to press candidates of their own particular brand. It is necessary, so the standard argument goes, to have a proper ‘ideological spread’ of staff and anyone who resists such views is said not to live up to the ideal of democratic tolerance.18 There is, secondly,

the reverse mechanism of self-protective discrimination: vakgroepen may avoid the appointment of certain persons for fear they may create political trouble. Finally, there is an implicit tendency towards self-censorship: in drawing up lists of candidates for professorships, certain qualified persons may be ruled out in committee beforehand because the committee does not deem their appointment prudent, given the conditions of the modern university. The presence of politically committed student members can appointments committees reinforces this readiness to engage in a delicate calculation based on other than scientific and scholarly criteria.

The Great Withdrawal

The trends I have described are still far from universal in Dutch universities. They are found most frequently in the faculties of social sciences and theology, to some extent in faculties of law and letters, much less so in the more professionally oriented faculties of sciences and medicine. There standards seem clear. The influence of vocational bodies is stronger and organizational restrictions are greater. Student power is blunted by the presence of a large nonacademic staff, and student demands are usually less dominated by political ideologies. There are, moreover, wide variations from group to group in a given field, through local circumstances or personal factors.

At the same time, there is a growing sense of insecurity in parts of the

university. Traditional conceptions of academic roles - in the relations between professors and junior colleagues and between academic staff and students - are no longer accepted. Admittedly, these relations sometimes assumed an arbitrary character in the past through the monopolistic position of the single professor. But their character was generally well understood. Now new relations must be worked out in legally ambiguous settings. This causes considerable stress. Members of the academic staff may fall out among themselves over student demands. Partisan elections may align them formally in antagonistic camps. There is an extensive mixing of roles. Professors and students who meet one day in class or in examinations may encounter one another next day in council rooms for a wrangle on matters of deep professional concern. Such ambiguous relations require a large investment in time and tact and they may eventually impose a heavy toll. To preserve harmony, academic staff members may assent to decisions in which they do not really believe. Once this becomes a regular occurrence, they sometimes experience a severe loss of self-respect. A false tone of jocularity creeps in, a pose of good fellowship not really felt. A mask of optimism may be worn in public which is only taken off in furtive meetings with like-minded colleagues, or in the privacy of a suffering family at home.

Eventually, such artificial participation tends to give way to deliberate avoidance. The transfer of authority from appointed to effective office effected by the act has permitted a flight away from formal responsibility. The tendency of academics to withdraw into their own specialized world is therefore aggravated by the new university reforms, for what was once an inclination only now becomes escape, which is accompanied by a curious mixture of resentment and a sense of guilt. Although those who withdraw deliberately refuse to avail themselves of the opportunities for election to the new councils, they often still resent the legal mandate and the ‘political’ authority which such organs represent. Therefore, open entry does not lead to willing participation, nor does election confer effective legitimacy.

The ‘New Democracy’ and the ‘New Management’

The organizational revolution in the Dutch universities has occurred at a time when they face other important structural problems of finance, of curricular reform, and of a reorientation of science policy above all.

The budget of the ministry of education increased dramatically since 1960 - from 1,420,633,000 D.fls. in 1960 to 6,707,422,000 in 1970 to 10,066,828,000 in 1973, that is, 15.4 percent, 23.2 percent, and 23.4 percent respectively of the total government budget. The share of the higher edu-

cational division within it grew even more - from 8.9 percent of all educational expenditures in 1955, to 13.4 percent in 1960, 15.9 percent in 1965, and 18.9 percent in 1970. Competing demands from other departments, as well as from other sections of the ministry itself, led to a decision that expenditures on higher education should not continue to increase. Two possible measures were considered: these were to raise revenue by an increase in tuition fees and to curtail total expenditures.

The center-right Biesheuvel cabinet formed in 1971 decided to raise tuition fees from 200 to 1,000 D.fls., that is, from some U.S. $80 per annum to about U.S. $400 at 1973 exchange rates. In 1972 legislation to this effect passed in both houses of parliament - with considerable opposition in the upper house. Student activists called for an immediate boycott against payment of tuition fees. This action ultimately proved successful, not least because the law had certain technical defects, and because the university councils and executive boards generally went on record against the law and applied it only halfheartedly. The issue of tuition fees did much to reactivate and solidify the radical student movement; it weakened the authority of the executive baords; and it complicated relations between the ministry and the universities. In 1973 a new left-oriented cabinet decided to reduce tuition fees by half, without so far having appeased the boycotters.19

The control of expenditures was less controversial. The Biesheuvel cabinet simply froze the larger part of planned expansion of staff and university buildings from 1971, which necessitated limits on admission into particular fields of study. At the same time most parties began to agree on the need for basic reforms in the university structure, in the field of degree programs as well as in the control of scientific research.

Both financial and educational considerations eventually convinced most observers that the prolonged period of academic study traditionally prevailing in the Netherlands should be abandoned. Instead, a split was envisaged between a shorter first-degree program and later more specialized graduate training. During the first year, the ability of students to follow an academic course of study successfully would be tested; they would be allowed to repeat this year once in the event of failure. Then a three-year program would lead to a ‘doctorandus’ degree. Afterwards, only a few carefully selected students would continue with a fundamental research training at

master's or doctoral level. These new plans, called the ‘Posthumus’ reforms - after their initiator, the late Professor K. Posthumus - present much fuel for a new conflagration in the universities. Student radicals, as well as teachers of both the left and more traditionalist circles, have denounced the reforms as an attempt to force the university into a straitjacket. They proclaim, instead, that the university should remain a place for unfettered academic inquiry, with unlimited entry for all qualified persons.

In addition to these new reforms, a complex system of planning is being established which also looks into the possibilities of a division of labor among the universities. Many new committees are being formed, numerous discussion papers are being prepared, and information is being sought on very diverse points. At the same time new curricula must be drawn up. This will stir up further controversy as it will touch many vested interests, old and new alike.

The reforms are further complicated by the desire of the government to achieve a closer integration between the universities and many other existing institutions of higher education, such as teacher training colleges, schools of social work, technical colleges, and so on. This will require many new institutional provisions, and will impose additional burdens on overworked councils and university bureaucracies at central as well as faculty level.

In addition to all these problems, a reorientation is also taking place in the field of science policy. There are at least two reasons for this. The principle of complete freedom of science is being questioned because it is believed to be at the root of the technology to which many of the defects of modern society are attributed. Furthermore, the high costs and the diffuse organization of scientific research have led the government to demand better information on actual costs, so as to be able to allocate funds in accordance with a general science policy under the direct responsibility of a minister of science.20

These new developments create various problems for science in the universities. They demand an elaborate reporting system on research plans and on the progress of each research project; they force universities to separate budgetarily the costs of teaching from those of research; and they envisage exceedingly complex organizational arrangements, with separate committees for research at vakgroep level, faculty level, and university level, interuniversity organs, scientific research organizations, and ministerial policy advisers.

The Crisis of Government

The confluence of the ‘new democracy,’ on the one hand, and the ‘new management,’ on the other, thus poses a fundamental dilemma. The government wishes to make the main decisions - so as to secure better financial control, to reorganize the entire structure of higher education, and to obtain a grip on the more fundamental decisions in science policy. But it must at the same time obtain consent. The new management requires centralization, the new democracy demands freedom and security at the periphery. Across these two forces pushing in opposite directions runs a host of institutional vested interests, of which the new ‘democratic’ university organs are not the least forceful.

If one may speak in the Dutch situation of ‘the crisis of the university,’ this paradox offers perhaps its most conspicuous example. Dutch universities face a process of massive reforms which would create tensions under even the most favorable of circumstances. These reforms must now be carried through with the aid of institutions of doubtful legitimacy, in the face of a withdrawal by large groups of the academic staff. There are serious conflicts between ad hoc electoral mandates and professional qualifications. The banner of democratic reform often covers particularistic interests, which are backed by the pressure of direct confrontation. There is less willingness to abide by rules. There is an oppressive burden of information gathering and meetings. There is growing group egoism. Deliberate as well as unconscious politicization threatens certain parts of the university. There is often an unacknowledged lowering of standards. There is a notable fall from the high prestige which universities once enjoyed.

Some of these developments may be the result of ineluctable changes in society. But others are the consequence of the reactions of elites in society and in the universities who lost their self-confidence when they had to face sudden demands contended for by unwonted tactics. There is a deep tragedy in these developments. It is probably true that the traditional values of the university, as the seat of academic liberty and higher learning, can be retained only through rather substantial structural reforms. But, by allowing a process of drift to prevail within the universities, the responsible authorities may have deprived themselves of that very foundation of goodwill and civic spirit on which a fundamental reorganization must rest.


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