After Romanian, Finnish and Hungarian are also disappearing from the Netherlands

What happened to the Romanian programme at the UvA is now also happening to the Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and Hungarian programmes in Groningen: they are being discontinued. As a result, it will soon no longer be possible to study Finnish and Hungarian in the Netherlands. This was reported by RTV Noord. It will still be possible to complete the programme.

The discontinuation of the minor language programmes is due to the Faculty of Arts at the University of Groningen having to make drastic cuts: 2½ million euros per year. As a result, a number of programmes are being scrapped or merged. According to the broadcaster, the cuts will result in the loss of thirty to forty jobs. Some of these will be through natural attrition, while the rest will be forced redundancies.

Humanities programmes are struggling throughout the Netherlands; because they attract too few students, they can no longer stay afloat. Last month, the UvA’s representative advisory body agreed to the discontinuation of the Romanian programme. Danish and Norwegian (and Swedish) can still be studied at the UvA.