Great social injustice
You might not think about it much, but the Netherlands has a silent majority largely made up of HBO alumni. These HBO alumni don’t have columns in the Groene Amsterdammer, don’t hold senior positions in the business community and rarely end up in the House of Representatives, but they are there and they are work hard Sometimes it ends up in middle management. They are also the foundation of our civilization and they are tired of being ignored. In fact, they seem to refuse to suffer their fate in silence any longer, according to an opinion piece published today by her spokesperson in the Norwegian Refugee Council. In it, Barbara Ommen (herself a college graduate) complains quite unselfishly about the lack of recognition and appreciation for HBO alumni, who (apparently) are not often mentioned or referred to when people talk about highly educated people, who are nevertheless very heavy.
“The equation of higher education with the university reveals one of the most fundamental problems in higher education: the overvaluation of teaching and research, which comes at the expense of practice-oriented teaching and research.”
(…)
“Just the facts: Higher education in the Netherlands has two forms. With universities and colleges; scientific and vocational higher education; research-based and practice-oriented. Universities expect 342,000 students next year, and vocational higher education 444,000.”
It goes on for a while and then Ommen concludes that the media should pay more attention to HBO graduates. We would especially like to take this opportunity to point out the importance of representation. It would be useful for the NRC to immediately introduce a quota for higher professional education in the editorial board, a measure that would also increase the value of the currently meaningless journalism school diplomas. Justice for higher professional education!
