amsterdam

Hermans: Easing the universities' burden.

The planned transfer of a significant proportion of the research budget of Dutch universities to the national basic research organization, NWO, has been abandoned. The decision was announced by the new research minister Loek Hermans (left), who took office in August following the re-election of a Liberal-Labour coalition government.

The transfer of Dfl 500 million (US$267 million), about 20 per cent of the universities' research budget, had been planned last year by the previous government (see Nature 390, 9; 1997 ), which was also a coalition of Liberal and Labour parties. Unsurprisingly, the scheme had been championed by the NWO but opposed by universities, where most Dutch basic research is carried out.

Hermans, a professional politician with no research experience, told universities two weeks ago that he was abandoning the scheme because it would place too great a burden on them. They have recently been told that their general budget will be reduced in stages by Dfl 285 million over the next few years (see Nature 394, 405; 1998 ).

The NWO has not yet received formal notification of Hermans' decision. But Reinder van Duinen, NWO's president, describes the decision as “a shame” because he believes that the proportion of basic research money allocated through competitive grants is too low. To run a healthy dual funding system in the Netherlands, the amount of competitive grant money should be doubled, he says.