Resolution on Budget cuts in Flemish Higher Education
Flemish higher education is under severe pressure due to the drastic budget cuts it is facing. The Flemish Government plans to cut €75 million from higher education in 2026. This decision jeopardizes access to higher education in Flanders and Brussels and further undermines institutions that have already been structurally underfunded for years. These cuts will be implemented by tightening scholarship eligibility, significantly reducing subsidies for non-EEA students, and cancelling the special “Brussels funds,” which were designed to compensate for the specific challenges of Brussels as a multilingual capital of Belgium and the European Union. These measures disproportionately affect the most vulnerable students and threaten the democratic accessibility of our higher education system.
Recent estimates indicate that 20,000 students risk losing their scholarship. Students older than 30 or those taking fewer than 54 ECTS per year would become ineligible for support, despite many of them working alongside their studies or studying in more flexible formats for financial, family, or health-related reasons. While exceptions are being discussed, there is still significant uncertainty about who will be excluded. Students in vulnerable situations, including first-generation students, student-workers, and students from lower-income families are most at risk of being left behind.
These budget cuts come at a time when higher education institutions (HEIs) are already struggling with annual funding deficiencies estimated between €400 and €600 million, caused in part by the persistent failure to adjust budgets for inflation as legally required. As a result, essential domains such as infrastructure, student accommodation, the quality of education, and student support services have been neglected. Auditoria are often too small for current cohorts, forcing students to sit on floors; counselling and coaching services are overstretched; and programs face increasing difficulty maintaining quality.
Over the past years, Flemish universities have repeatedly contributed in solidarity to successive rounds of austerity, recognizing the need for structural measures to restore public finances. However, the scale, disproportionality, and limited justification of these new cuts now threaten to undermine the foundations of Flanders’ knowledge economy. “They run counter to the innovation ambitions set out in the Flemish Coalition Agreement 2024–202S and make the government’s 1% target for public investment in research and development increasingly unrealistic. They are also difficult to reconcile with the Flemish Government’s emphasis on competitiveness and productivity, as highlighted in former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s influential report. Investment in higher education is, after all, one of the most productive forms of investment there is,” states Koen Verlaeckt, Secretary-General of VLIR.
Moreover, the higher-education system in Flanders is already understaffed. According to an OECD review, the student-to-staff ratio in the Flemish Community is around 19 students per full-time teaching staff member, significantly above the OECD average of 15.2 — a clear sign of structural understaffing. Planned budget cuts could lead to the loss of up to 350 full-time positions, which would further strain a system that already has fewer staff per student than comparable systems. This would mean larger classes, diminished individual guidance, reduced supervisory capacity for research, heavier workloads, and heightened burnout risk. All of which threaten the quality and accessibility of higher education.
Stakeholders have repeatedly warned that successive Flemish governments have failed to uphold the intended spirit of the 2008 financing framework. Estimates from unions, campaign groups, and university associations suggest cumulative shortfalls in the hundreds of millions of euros, though these figures represent well-substantiated stakeholder calculations rather than legally audited claims. Regardless of the exact figure, the trend is indisputable: Flemish higher education has faced a sustained erosion of resources, and these new cuts deepen an already critical situation.
ESU and VVS strongly condemn the approach taken by the Flemish Government, as it jeopardises accessibility and puts educational quality at risk. We therefore emphasise the following demands:
- Do not tighten access to scholarships. There should be no increase in minimum income thresholds or strict ECTS requirements. Students taking fewer than 54 ECTS, often for valid financial, medical, or socio-economic reasons must not be punished. Stricter criteria disproportionately affect those who already receive less support.
- Stop further budget cuts to higher education.Democratic access to high-quality education must always be guaranteed. Within a system already struggling with chronic underfunding, further cuts inevitably shift costs onto students and weaken research and educational quality.
- Fully restore the Brussels funds. These funds play a crucial role in supporting students who require additional language guidance, as well as households in the Brussels Capital Region that need extra financial support. Cutting them would disproportionately harm vulnerable students and Dutch-as-second-language learners.
The planned €75 million cut, combined with years of structural underfunding, threatens to push Flemish higher education past a critical tipping point. With thousands of students at risk of losing their scholarships, the withdrawal of essential Brussels funding, and the possible loss of hundreds of staff positions in an already understaffed system, the accessibility, quality, and international competitiveness of Flemish higher education are at stake. Sustained investment, not further austerity, is the only path to safeguard a strong, democratic, and future-proof higher-education system in Flanders and Brussels.