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(ibid: 83). In part, this new system of national accreditation was implemented in response to the1999 Bologna declaration which identified certain expectations of higher education in Europe,including quality assurances processes.The Netherlands-Flanders Accreditation Organization (NVAO) was established by law as theaccrediting body, with responsibility for the accreditation of all Bachelors and Mastersprogrammes from publicly funded institutions, and private institutions wishing to offer degreeprogrammes (ibid: 83). This implies that private higher education institutions will be included inthe accreditation procedures on an equal footing with public ones, apart from the issue of publicfunding (Weert and Boezeroy, 2007: 71). This will open up the Dutch higher education systemfor globalization forces. The NVAO evaluates each Bachelors and Masters programme foraccreditations on a 6-year cycle (MinOCW, 2007a: 76). The criteria used to evaluate theseprogrammes are aims and objectives, content of the programme, deployment of staff, facilitiesand provisions (OECD, 2008a: 84).The Ministry of Education, Culture and Science has set the ambition to make the accreditation ofhigher education programmes at HBO institutions and universities simpler and more efficient. Inorder to achieve this, OCW wants to broaden and virtually halve the number of Bachelorprogrammes at universities. University Master degree programmes and UAS courses will also berestructured and reduced in number. New programmes of study will not be accredited until theMinistry of Education, Culture and Science has first established that there is a social demand forthem (MinOCW, 2007a: 121). In the short term, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Scienceaims to reduce the administrative burden by obliging the NVAO to focus more on the educationalcontent of study programmes and less on the process involved.2.2.4 Overall size of the higher education systemThe total number of students in higher education rose from just over 438,000 in 1997-98 toaround 585,000 in 2007-08 (Figure 2-2). This is an increase of more than 33% over a 10-yearperiod. However, this growth was biased in favor of UAS. For a large part, this can be explainedby an increasing gap in graduates from secondary educational schools between the HAVO level(which mainly prepares for studies at a UAS) and VWO (which predominantly prepares forstudies at a research university) (Statistics Netherlands Statline, 2009a). The inflow of newstudents to UAS shows a strong growth over the period 1997-98 to 1999-00, followed by a threeyearperiod of decline and subsequently growth from 2002-03 onwards. The inflow of students toresearch universities shows a steady growth over the entire period from 1997-98 to 2007-08. Inrelative terms, the inflow of students to UAS increased by 27% over the past ten years, whereasthe inflow of students to research universities increased by almost 50%. It therefore seems thatresearch universities are catching up with UAS in terms of total student enrolment over the nextcouple of years.However, in accepting new students universities are also increasingly confronted with a financialconstraint since the public educational budget for universities has remained more or less stableover the past decade whereas student numbers have increased strongly. This implies that theeducational budget per student has decreased over the last ten years (Figure 2-8). As Table 2-1shows, the growth of the student population at UAS has been positive for more than a decade. Bycomparison, the number of students enrolled at universities was in decline over the period 1993-98 (Table 2-2). In recent years the number of university students is on the rise again, albeit thatthe gap between enrolments at UAS and universities is also widening. In the academic year 2007-08, the UAS sector had some 384,000 students whereas some 219,000 students were enrolled atthe 14 Dutch research institutions.37