'Arts education virtually eliminated'

Update 11 September 2012: Labour Party corrects election manifesto in response to reporting below:

"In any case, the conclusion was clear and Jadnanansing was committed to leaving no misunderstanding on this. A €100 million intervention is out of the question. Word of mouth with the advice of the Dijkgraaf Commission is far from what her party wants to see.

Interesting figures from a study of the CPB figures, which have so far remained underexposed. After all, everyone in the press and politics thinks it is far too complicated to devote even a single debate to the figures on education or culture.

We found this through facebook on the site www.scienceguide.nl in a run-through of CPB figures on research and development in education. Alongside rather alarming figures on the decline of innovation budgets in other education sectors, this passage on arts education caught our eye:

The Labour Party (page 284), PVV (page 300) and the CDA (page 313) all cut €100 million by reporting that arts education will make stricter selections and would therefore apparently have money left over. De facto, this means abolishing the sector, since in total some €200 million goes into it. Cutting it by half is not efficiency through slightly tighter admissions.

On top of that, certainly in the CDA -but also in PvdA and PVV- the emphasis will remain on maintaining a vital cultural infrastructure 'in the region'. The lion's share of the €100 million hit will therefore fall in the Randstad, where the top universities are concentrated.

Given their limited size and budget, this would mean the end of the AHK, Rietveld Academy, Royal Conservatoire, HKU and Codarts. At most, a merger of chunks in Amsterdam could still be viable. The only HE sector - besides astronomy - that is counted among the world's top in our country as a whole would thus de facto disappear. One can already plot the bewildered reactions in the international media.

In the meantime, we find it rather alarming. The general reflections of the upcoming Purple 3 cabinet will be interesting, but we are also curious about sources that can tell us more.

Read the whole story here.