The Knowledge Coalition

Alex Usher: Hi everyone. I'm Alex Usher, and this is the World of Higher Education podcast.
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 ax to the country's higher education funding system.
But the Netherlands had a defense 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.
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: Yeah, I'm not sure that's that's an easy question, but I'll give you some ingredients which were helpful, I think. 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 focus on medical education and research.
So that infrastructure leads to a, a lot of young people that get higher education at a certain high level, and research is, doing research and get to know research is, is part of that. So I think that was probably a bit helpful.
There is also a very strongly developing network of schools for applied sciences. They're not 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 uh, which comes to mind is that in the Netherlands, I think collaboration in between disciplines but also in between universities, university medical center, et cetera, and societal partners, including, of course, companies, is, well, it's very much in our genes. And that is also helpful in this respect.
Alex Usher: Your organization, which is the Dutch Research Council, you're 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?
Marcel Levi: Yeah, so, so it started about, yeah, about 10 years ago. And the reason for this was that the, we had a feeling that our message of the importance of knowledge for the economy, for the further development of the country, did not come across very well to politicians.
And they were talking to universities, of course, and then they were talking to us, and then they were talking to the Academy of Sciences, and we, well, 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 at the end, it resulted in a situation that nobody got any extra funding because there was a, a competition of course from other sectors.
We decided then to work together so that at least in the direction of political parties, the government, we would have a single voice. A voice representing all, well, different parts of the academic field. So this is all universities, all university medical center, the Dutch Research Council, the Academy of Sciences.
Very importantly, two organizations of employers joined us. We also have a couple of people from the Applied Sciences Research Institute. So this is, it's quite a big group. It's about 15 people. But we speak with one voice, and when there are elections or difficult political decisions to be taken we, we try to find consensus, and usually that's okay.
And so we can actually direct the interests of, of research and the, and the academic world towards politicians a little bit more strongly.
Alex Usher: 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?
Marcel Levi: Yeah. Okay, good question. I have the pleasure of chairing this group and I often feel a little bit like a diplomat, of course because it is a lot of talking, a lot of bridging gaps between different institutions with different interests and different backgrounds. So our policy is that at least we try to find common ground, and that is our statement.
And then of course, individual organizations are free to add individual points in their individual communications. And that is more or less effective, that doesn't matter. But at least we have one common voice. And, 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, and then they talk to everybody and nobody.
And now they invite us all the time and say, "Okay, can you speak on behalf of the sector?" And they use us in terms of when they want to push through a certain measure or, you know, a budget change or whatever. They say, "We have talked to the sector," and they, they tend to agree with us.
Alex Usher: So you were put together, as you say, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, and if I understand correctly, it was specifically to draft advice to government, the Wetenschapsagenda or science agenda. Why did it stay together afterwards? I mean, often when you bring people together for a one-off like that, they do their job and they go away. But clearly, you guys found a reason to keep talking to one another and, and you know, what was that like?
Marcel Levi: Yeah, so it started like, okay, so when we talked as a group to government, the government of course asked us, "And what do you have to offer to us?" Because they have very strange ideas about science. They think it is all about big laboratories, a lot of booms and colors and white coats, and they don't really understand what's, what's-- of course, that does happen, but that, that's not what all research is about.
And so we explained a little bit what we are doing, and we said, "Well, a lot of things that we do is actually very beneficial to society." And then the idea of the National Science Agenda came up, and a very interesting thing. So we said to everybody in the country, organizations, but also individual people groups of people can ask questions to to researchers.
And thousands and thousands of questions came in. Very nice questions, very organized questions, also sometimes very strange questions. It didn't matter, and then we tried to group them into themes, and we said, "Okay uh, we think we can start answering questions on these..." At, at that time, there were 20 different themes.
And then, and that was an important glue up until today, the government decided to give us an extra 350 million euros to do this, and that budget has stayed there all that time. And of course, the program has developed and evolved, and it's getting better and better but the money's still there. So, uh, that was extremely helpful.
Alex Usher: We're gonna take a short break. We'll be right back.
And we're back. Look, Marcel, I was, I was doing a lot of work on funding of research universities around the world you know, just before COVID, and it was remarkable to me the extent to which university funding in the Netherlands was falling in per student terms in the 2000, in the 10s, I guess.
And I think that may have been more about increasing student numbers than it was about decreasing funding. But uh, I mean, how did this happen, right? Was it-- Did the, did the Wetenschapsagenda fail or, or, you know, I mean, so what, what happened and, and what did the Knowledge Coalition say or do about it?
Marcel Levi: Yeah, well, if you think, if you see what happened, it actually, the, 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 overflowed with students, national and international students. They had to hire a lot of people. They had to invest a lot in, 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, 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 ten years it's actually doubled, and now it's more or less stable.
Alex Usher: Interesting. Well, you referenced there the quite significant cuts and, of course, that happened under the PVV-led government of 2024 and 2025, and those were quite staggering cuts, right? So the bill-- You know, in the 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? I mean, you know, usually-- sometimes you think of, of more conservative parties as being more business-oriented, and business is mobilized in favor of, you know, research and education. So why did that government choose that path, and was there a reaction from the coalition?
Marcel Levi: Yeah, good question. I, I think it is not so much that they were conservative. The majority of them was what we call a populist party, and they don't like universities because they say universities are run by left-wing people, and they only talk about, you know, gender-neutral toilets. And they have all kind of stuff in their agendas that are not interesting to us, and we are representing the, the, normal people, and for them, universities are very far away, so we're not going to invest in that.
They run that government together with other right-wing parties, which are usually much more friendly towards research, but actually thought, "Well, every euro that we do not have to spend on any public service is welcome." So that was a very toxic coalition that uh, fortunately only lasted for two years.
We now have a new coalition that's much more research-friendly. They spend a lot of money to repair, partly repair, I have to say, the damage that was done by the previous coalition. But it also shows how vulnerable we are as research institutions for, yeah, the whims of political parties that do sometimes very strange things.
Alex Usher: So, I’m not sure what the role of the knowledge coalition was during the election, I, you may have had to
Marcel Levi: Yeah. Well, of course we, we fought that decision, but we-- But, but, well, I, I, I think it's fair to say they didn't listen to us very much. So we took then an alternative strategy, and we started a public opinion campaign together. And, trying to express to people why research is important also for normal people to say so, and how it could help us, how it could actually address important issues like climate change, energy transition, healthcare issues.
And that was, I think, rather successful, and we had a, a couple of very public figures talking for us.
Alex Usher: Was that new? Was that something you had done before or was that simply,
gosh,
the
the PVV g- coalition...
Marcel Levi: It was very new. Researchers were usually very modest, not very much in... A little bit if, you know, some very famous professors or Nobel Prize winners, they got some media attention. But now it was actually us talking about ourselves, but not, not talking about ourselves, but what we could actually mean for society.
And well, it, it sounds very brave if I say this was well orchestrated. It was not at all. It was actually a little bit improvised, but it seems to work.
Alex Usher: But it, it had an impact, you think?
Marcel Levi: It had an impact, I think, because the next elections were won by political parties that are much more-- have a much more favorable view towards research and, and research institutions.
Alex Usher: And my understanding is that after every election, you know, when parties are negotiating their platform, you actually publish advice to the coalition, and they basically, if I understand correctly, they basically took your advice, you know, 100% and put it in the, the formal coalition agreement for the government that took power,
Marcel Levi: Yeah. I've never seen that before.
Alex Usher: How did you persuade them to be more generous?
Marcel Levi: Well, I-- this is very interesting. So of course, we produce text and words, and then, of course, we're happy if some of our ideas are being reproduced in coalition agreements. But certainly when I saw the, for the first time, the coalition agreement, I said, "I know these sentences. These are my sentences." So, so they actually literally copied a lot of text that we had. I cannot say that they literally copied the budgets that we proposed, but at least the general thinking was completely copied and, well, the budget was increased.
Alex Usher: So let's look over the longer term. You know, if we're looking, say, 10 or 20 years out, you know, what do you think the kinds of things are that the Netherlands needs to do to stay ahead of the rest of Europe in terms of being a knowledge-intensive, high-tech society? Where are the key investments?
Marcel Levi: It is 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 thinks that Europe should actually be ahead of the rest of the world. And we want to be part of that. And that's also because w- there are also big European research programs, as you probably know, and the Netherlands is a big, big beneficiary of those programs.
So if Europe does well, we do well. So I think we are very chauvinistic when it comes to, you know, soccer and, and, and other issues, but not so much in research. I think we're chauvinistic in terms of for Europe, and we think that for Europe, research is extremely important, and knowledge and innovation to actually, well, to actually exist in a world of, of superpowers that are not 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.
Alex Usher: Got it. Well, and then I guess from the European perspective, what are the right investments here? Is it, is it just about putting money in university research, or is there-- is it more to do with having to put money into alliances between, you know, universities and business? What's the--
Marcel Levi: I, I think most people will say that, the research that is really important, it could be fundamental and it could be more applied research, but research that's important to address big societal problems is interdisciplinary research. It comes from collaboration between different research groups, between different universities, often also between European countries.
So we firmly believe that in collaborative programs, actually on a national scale, and you will see that this is also going to happen on a European scale, we have some big programs that are rather collaborative than competitive where we actually emphasize that people should work together and should successfully work together.
So I think that's where we are going, and we of course, have to find a balance between research for society and what we call research for research. There will always be, you know, investigator-driven fundamental research that nobody really knows will ever be applicable for any problem. Usually it is applicable, but usually also for something else than it was initially started for. But we should also have sufficient research in, in that area.
Alex Usher: So listen, I, I imagine there's people in many countries who are looking at your success over the last 12 months and thinking, "Gosh, we should build an organization like that." I mean, that's-- I, I have to tell you, I-- 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, you know, the Dutch consensus-driven polder model?
And, and I guess if, if it is applicable elsewhere, what advice would you have to anyone who wants to start one?
Marcel Levi: Yeah. So when you're broadcasting this uh, this podcast, we are all, and we as every country's research council, is convening in Bangkok for our annual Global Research Council, and we all talk to each other quite intensely. We all know each other, and we talk about these things. And what you can appreciate is that countries are very different, are differently organized, have different systems, but we try to copy as much as we can successful initiatives and programs from other countries.
And I talk a lot about these things to my colleagues, not only in Europe, but also in North America and uh, the Global South and Asia, and they're very interested, and it's not one-to-one copyable to their systems. But actually, you see here and there similar initiatives taking place.
Alex Usher: Um, And there's nothing specifically Dutch about it?
Marcel Levi: I don't think so. I, I, I think Dutch... Well, Robert Dijkgraaf, who is a, a famous Dutch physicist and scientist, and also a, a previous minister, often said, "The Dutch are champions in collaboration," and I think that's true. They easily travel to other countries to stay there for a while. We welcome very much international researchers into our institutions. We'd love to have international collaboration. We're a quite open society. So I think these things are in particular helpful for research, but that's not typical Dutch. There's also other countries that do that.
Alex Usher: Marcel Levi, thank you very much, and hup Holland.
Marcel Levi: Thank you.
Alex Usher: 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.