Amsterdam, Netherlands - SEO Economisch Onderzoek

not receive funding from the government, although their students are eligible for student support(Weert and Broezerooy, 2007: 43).Figure 2-7: Public funding of universities and hogescholen (% of GDP)1.00%0.90%0.80%0.70%0.60%0.50%0.40%0.30%0.20%0.10%0.00%hogescholenuniversities1995199619971998199920002001200220032004200520062007Source: Statistics Netherlands Statline (2008)First stream funding consists of four components: an educational budget, a research budget,facilities for medical students and facilities for university medical hospitals. As was pointed outin § 2.2.4, over the past decade the publicly funded educational budget of universities hasremained more or less stable. In real terms the publicly funded educational budget of universitieshas increased only slightly from EUR 3.0 billion in 1998 to EUR 3.2 billion in 2006 (VSNU,2008d). Over the same period student numbers have increased from 289,000 to 367,000. Thisimplies a steep decline in the publicly funded educational budget per student, as is illustratedinFigure 2-8. The publicly funded research budget of universities has even declined in real termsover the last decade, from EUR 1.6 billion in 1998 to EUR 1.5 billion in 2006 (ibid, also seeVersleijen et al., 2007).47