The Netherlands has one of the most knowledge-intensive economies not just in Europe, but in the entire world. Despite its small size, it has many world-class universities, a remarkably collaborative research culture, deep ties between academia and industry — basically everything you’d want to stay at the forefront of the global economy. And yet, the Netherlands has not been immune to the factors that have hampered the drive for innovation in many other countries, most notably lack of funds and attacks from populists.
Longtime listeners will probably remember the details of much of this from my interview with Marijk van der Wende about 18 months ago, where we talked about the plans of the then-PVV-led government to take an axe to the country’s higher education funding system.
But the Netherlands had a defence mechanism that other countries facing this situation lack. It’s called the Knowledge Coalition, and that’s a broad alliance of universities, research organizations, employers, and scientific institutions that works together to present a unified voice to government on the importance of research and higher education.
It was originally created by government to act as an advisor on science and innovation. But more recently, the organization has become more political, not just raising the profile of knowledge organizations in the face of cuts, but also providing a roadmap for future activity that the new centrist government has adopted nearly word for word.
With me today to discuss all this is Marcel Levi. He’s president of the Dutch Research Council, chair of the Knowledge Coalition, and one of the most prominent voices in Dutch science policy. We talk about how the Netherlands built such a collaborative ecosystem, how the Knowledge Coalition evolved to respond to recent political attacks, and what other countries might learn from the Dutch experience.
It’s a fascinating discussion about how higher education systems can learn to work and collaborate politically with partners outside the sector, one I hope my friends at Canadian universities are listening to, because this here — this is the exact thing we need more of in Canada. So without further ado, let’s turn things over to Marcel.
The World of Higher Education Podcast
Episode 4.32 | The Knowledge Coalition
Transcript
Alex Usher (AU): Marcel, I think it’s fair to say that the Dutch economy is among the world’s most high-tech, most knowledge-intensive economies. Over the past few decades, what were the key policies that made it that way? How has the Netherlands come to be so successful in this respect?
Marcel Levi (ML): I’m not sure that’s an easy question, but I’ll give you some ingredients that were helpful, I think. We do have a solid knowledge infrastructure in terms of about 15 very strong universities all over the country. They’re all public universities, and also seven university medical centers, which are essentially the same but focused on medical education and research.
So that infrastructure leads to a lot of young people getting higher education at a certain high level, and doing research and getting to know research is part of that. So I think that was probably quite helpful.
There is also a very strongly developing network of schools for applied sciences. They’re officially not universities, but they are, well, more and more like universities, and they are very well connected with a lot of small and medium-sized enterprises all over the country.
And the third thing that comes to mind is that, in the Netherlands, collaboration between disciplines, but also between universities, university medical centers, and societal partners, including companies, is very much in our genes. And that is also helpful in this respect.
AU: Your organization, the Dutch Research Council, is part of something called the Knowledge Coalition. This seems to be a very unique and very Dutch kind of institution. How did it start? Who’s in this coalition?
ML: It started about 10 years ago. The reason for this was that we had the feeling that our message about the importance of knowledge for the economy, and for the further development of the country, did not come across very well to politicians.
They were talking to universities, of course, and then they were talking to us, and then they were talking to the Academy of Sciences. Of course, we all have similar interests, but we also have different interests. And the politicians actually cherry-picked a little bit between us. But in the end, it resulted in a situation where nobody got any extra funding, because there was competition from other sectors.
We decided then to work together so that, at least in the direction of political parties and the government, we would have a single voice — a voice representing all the different parts of the academic field.
So this includes all universities, all university medical centers, the Dutch Research Council, and the Academy of Sciences. Very importantly, two organizations of employers joined us. We also have people from the applied sciences research institutes. So it’s quite a big group — about 15 people.
But we speak with one voice, and when there are elections or difficult political decisions to be taken, we try to find consensus, and usually that works okay. So we can actually direct the interests of research and the academic world towards politicians a little bit more strongly.
AU: Sounds like a very broad membership. How does it work in practice? I mean, I know you say consensus, but how easy is it to get different groups to agree on anything?
ML: I have the pleasure of chairing this group, and I often feel a little bit like a diplomat, of course, because it involves a lot of talking and a lot of bridging gaps between different institutions with different interests and different backgrounds.
Our policy is that we try to find common ground, and that becomes our statement. Then, of course, individual organizations are free to add their own individual points in their own communications. Whether that’s more or less effective doesn’t really matter. At least we have one common voice.
And the interesting thing is that this is also very helpful for the civil servants in the ministries, because they very often, if there is a decision to be taken, do not know exactly who to talk to. So then they talk to everybody and nobody.
Now they invite us all the time and say, “Okay, can you speak on behalf of the sector?” They also use us when they want to push through a certain measure or budget change or whatever. They can say, “We have talked to the sector,” and that the sector tends to agree with them.
AU: So, you were put together, as you say, 10 or 12 years ago, and if I understand correctly, it was specifically to draft advice to the government — the Wetenschapsagenda, or Science Agenda. Why did it stay together afterwards? Often when you bring people together for a one-off like that, they do their job and then they go away. But clearly you guys found a reason to keep talking to one another. What was that like?
ML: It started like this: when we talked as a group to the government, the government of course asked us, “And what do you have to offer us?” Because they have very strange ideas about science. They think it is all about big laboratories, lots of booms and colors and white coats, and they don’t really understand what research is about. Of course, that does happen, but that’s not what all research is about.
So we explained a little bit about what we are doing, and we said, “Well, a lot of what we do is actually very beneficial to society.” Then the idea of the National Science Agenda came up, and it became a very interesting thing.
We said to everybody in the country — organizations, but also individual people or groups of people — that they could ask questions to researchers. Thousands and thousands of questions came in: very nice questions, very organized questions, and sometimes very strange questions. It didn’t matter.
Then we tried to group them into themes, and we said, “Okay, we think we can start answering questions in these areas.” At that time, there were 20 different themes.
And that became an important glue, right up until today, because the government decided to give us an extra €350 million to do this, and that budget has remained in place ever since. Of course, the program has developed and evolved and is getting better and better, but the money is still there. So that was extremely helpful.
AU: I was doing a lot of work on the funding of research universities around the world just before COVID, and it was really remarkable the extent to which university funding in the Netherlands was falling in per-student terms during the 2010s. I think that may have been more about increasing student numbers than decreasing funding, but how did this happen? Did the Wetenschapsagenda fail, or what happened? And what did the Knowledge Coalition say or do about it?
ML: Yeah, well, if you look at what happened, the amount of money spent on research dropped, but not so much in the Research Council and also not so much in the institutes of our organization and the Academy of Sciences. It was mostly at universities, and exactly for the reason you just mentioned.
They were completely overwhelmed with students — national and international students. They had to hire a lot of people, they had to invest a lot in education, and there was not a lot of money left for research.
On top of that, recently we had governments that were less friendly towards research. But actually, they were not so much less friendly towards research as they were less friendly towards universities for political reasons. So the big hits took place at universities.
If you look at the budget of the Dutch Research Council, in the last 10 years it has actually doubled, and now it’s more or less stable.
AU: You referenced the quite significant cuts that happened under the PVV-led government of 2024 and 2025, and those were staggering cuts, right? We’re talking billions of euros, and those were cuts that really could have impacted a lot of the knowledge economy. Why did the party choose that path? Usually, you think of more conservative parties as being more business-oriented, and business is often mobilized in favor of research and education. So why did that government choose that path, and was there a reaction from the coalition?
ML: Yeah, good question. I think it was not so much that they were conservative. The majority of them belonged to what we call a populist party, and they don’t like universities because they say universities are run by left-wing people who only talk about gender-neutral toilets and all kinds of things that are not interesting to them.
They present themselves as representing “normal people,” and for them, universities are very far away, so they say, “We’re not going to invest in that.”
They ran that government together with other right-wing parties, which are usually much more friendly towards research, but they also thought, “Well, every euro we don’t have to spend on a public service is welcome.” So that was a very toxic coalition that fortunately only lasted for two years.
We now have a new coalition that is much more research-friendly. They are spending a lot of money to partly repair the damage done by the previous coalition. But it also shows how vulnerable we are as research institutions to the whims of political parties that sometimes do very strange things.
AU: And was there a reaction from the coalition?
ML: Yeah, well, of course we fought that decision, but I think it’s fair to say they didn’t listen to us very much. So we took an alternative strategy and started a public opinion campaign together, trying to explain to people why research is important for normal people, and how it could help address important issues like climate change, the energy transition, and healthcare.
I think that was rather successful. We had a couple of very public figures speaking on our behalf.
AU: Was that new? Was that something you had done before?
ML: We had never done that before. It was very new. Researchers were usually very modest. Occasionally, very famous professors or Nobel Prize winners would get media attention, but now it was actually us talking about ourselves — or rather, not talking about ourselves, but talking about what we could actually mean for society.
And while it sounds very brave if I say this was well orchestrated, it was not at all. It was actually a little improvised, but it seemed to work.
AU: It had an impact, you think?
ML: It had an impact, I think, because the next elections were won by political parties that have a much more favorable view towards research and research institutions.
AU: My understanding is that after every election, when parties are negotiating their platform, you actually publish advice to the coalition. And if I understand correctly, they basically took your advice almost 100% and put it into the formal coalition agreement for the government that took power.
ML: Yeah. I’ve never seen that before.
AU: How did you persuade them to be more generous?
ML: Well, this is very interesting. Of course, we produce text and words, and we’re happy if some of our ideas are reproduced in coalition agreements. But when I saw the coalition agreement for the first time, I said, “I know these sentences. These are my sentences.”
So they actually literally copied a lot of text that we had written. I cannot say that they literally copied the budgets we proposed, but at least the general thinking was completely copied, and the budget was increased.
AU: Let’s look over the longer term. If we’re looking 10 or 20 years out, what do you think the Netherlands needs to do to stay ahead in terms of being a knowledge-intensive, high-tech society? Where are the key investments?
ML: It’s an interesting question because I think a large part of the people in our country do not think that we should be ahead of other European countries. I think the majority believes that Europe should actually be ahead of the rest of the world, and we want to be part of that.
That’s also because there are big European research programs, as you probably know, and the Netherlands is a major beneficiary of those programs. So if Europe does well, we do well.
I think we are very chauvinistic when it comes to soccer and other issues, but not so much in research. I think we are chauvinistic for Europe, and we believe that research, knowledge, and innovation are extremely important for Europe to continue to exist in a world of superpowers that are not always very friendly.
So that message clearly comes across, but it is not so much that we think we should be better than Germany or Belgium or France.
AU: From the European perspective, what are the right investments here? Is it just about putting money into university research, or is it more about investing in alliances between universities and business? What are the keys?
ML: I think most people would say that the research that is really important — whether it is fundamental or more applied research — is the kind of research that helps address major societal problems. And that research is interdisciplinary. It comes from collaboration between different research groups, between different universities, and often also between different European countries.
So we firmly believe in collaborative programs, first on a national scale, and increasingly also on a European scale. We now have some large programs that are more collaborative than competitive, where we emphasize that people should work together and should successfully work together. I think that is where we are heading.
At the same time, of course, we have to find a balance between research for society and what we call research for research. There will always be investigator-driven fundamental research where nobody really knows whether it will ever be applicable to any particular problem. Usually it does become applicable, but often for something completely different from what it was initially intended for.
So we also need to make sure we continue to support enough research in that area as well.
AU: I imagine there are people in many countries looking at your success over the last 12 months and thinking, “Gosh, we should build an organization like that.” I have to tell you, that’s something I’ve been advocating in Canada for about five years now.
Do you think this model is replicable elsewhere, or is it a specific product of the Dutch consensus-driven polder model? And if it is applicable elsewhere, what advice would you have for anyone who wants to start one?
ML: When you’re broadcasting this podcast, we — like every country’s research council — are convening in Bangkok for our annual Global Research Council meeting, and we all talk to each other quite intensely. We all know each other, and we talk about these kinds of things.
What you can appreciate is that countries are very different. They are organized differently and have different systems, but we try to copy as much as we can from successful initiatives and programs in other countries.
I talk a lot about these things with my colleagues, not only in Europe, but also in North America, the Global South, and Asia, and they’re very interested. It’s not something that can be copied one-to-one into their systems, but you do see similar initiatives emerging here and there.
AU: And there’s nothing specifically Dutch about it?
ML: I don’t think so. Robert Dijkgraaf, who is a famous Dutch physicist and scientist, and also a former minister, often said, “The Dutch are champions in collaboration,” and I think that’s true.
People here easily travel to other countries to stay there for a while. We very much welcome international researchers into our institutions. We love international collaboration. We are quite an open society. So I think those things are especially helpful for research, but they are not uniquely Dutch. There are other countries that do that as well.
AU: Marcel Levi, thank you very much.
ML: Thank you.
AU: It just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany MacLennan and Sam Pufek, and you, our readers and listeners for joining in. If you have any questions or comments about today’s episode or suggestions for future ones, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Bye for now.
*This podcast transcript was generated using an AI transcription service with limited editing. Please forgive any errors made through this service. Please note, the views and opinions expressed in each episode are those of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host and team, or our sponsors.
