Dutch applied-research institutes including TNO are disappointed in Education minister Dijkgraaf’s higher education and public R&D plans, presented a few weeks ago. They asked for a 15 percent budget increase, but instead, the cabinet offers only one-off investments of 50 million euros in research infrastructure and funds from the National Growth Fund.
With an additional 5-billion-euro investment in education and research over the next ten years, the institutes feel they got shortchanged. “Companies, universities and our organization form a knowledge chain. But knowledge institutes might become the weakest link in that chain,” Annemieke Nijhof told FD (link in Dutch). Nijhof is chair of the TO2 Federation, which unites the five large applied-research institutes.