Existing undergraduate programmes will no longer be expected to meet strict rules on foreign language teaching,?the Dutch minister for education, culture and science has?announced.

Proposed as part of the ¡°internationalisation in balance¡± bill, aimed at reducing international student intake,?the government had previously planned to impose a?test, known as the TAO,?on both existing and new undergraduate programmes.

This would have ensured universities had to meet strict conditions before more than one-third of teaching could be delivered in a language other than Dutch.

Caspar van den Berg, president of the umbrella body Universities of the Netherlands (UNL), previously told ̽»¨ÊÓƵ that the measure would prompt a ¡°massacre of programmes¡± if applied.

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, minister Eppo Bruins said he would implement a May motion calling for the test to be scrapped for existing courses, acknowledging that he had ¡°advised against this motion¡± ahead of its adoption. The TAO will still be applied to new courses, he noted, while an inventory of existing non-Dutch-language courses must be drawn up.

To pass the TAO, new programmes will be required to meet one of four conditions: they relate to a sector with labour shortages; they are only available in one location; they are taught in a border area or a region experiencing population decline; or they are ¡°inherently international¡±.

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Earlier this year, Dutch universities proposed a ¡°self-management plan¡± to reduce their international intake, pledging to cut some English-language courses and convert others into Dutch, alongside other measures, if existing courses were exempted from the TAO. Writing to parliament, Bruins said the universities had demonstrated ¡°concrete intentions to bring internationalisation in higher professional education and university education into balance¡±.

While he maintained that ¡°the assessment of existing foreign-language bachelor¡¯s programmes would provide the most guarantee for an efficient foreign-language range of programmes¡±, the education minister said the universities¡¯ proposals would ¡°bring the system closer to a balanced use of foreign-language education¡±.

, UNL president van den Berg called the move ¡°very good news for universities and for the Netherlands¡±, adding that the TAO ¡°would have been disastrous for our education, the labour market and the vitality of border and shrinking regions¡±.

UNL noted that student registrations from the European Economic Area were already 4.5 per cent lower for the upcoming academic year than they were in 2024-25, and 11 per cent lower than in 2023-24. Global student registrations were 3 per cent lower than last year, the umbrella body said.

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¡°These figures show that universities are gaining more and more control over the influx of international students thanks to the measures taken. But we also see that the image of the Netherlands as an attractive place to work and study has suffered a lot of damage,¡± van den Berg said.

¡°It is therefore essential that the Netherlands develops a talent strategy, so that we develop, attract and retain talent, also from abroad.¡±

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com