As a relatively wealthy nation with intensive international trade connections and an enthusiasm for innovation and exploration, the Netherlands has developed into a gateway of ideas and an ambitious hub of education and research. The nation's international reputation is reflected by such indicators as the number of Nobel Prize winners, the research output in academic journals, and the global rankings of its institutions of higher education. With nearly all of its rated universities belonging to the world top two hundred according to the Chinese Shanghai, the German CHE and the English THE rankings, the Netherlands, as one leading British newspaper found, is emerging as “continental Europe's principal power in higher education.”

In the so-called Bologna Process, the European Union explicitly aimed at homogenizing European higher education. The Netherlands was an eager participant in this process. Yet, diversity has remained a feature of higher education in Europe, and the specific characteristics of Dutch higher education are still visible. The structure of education is after all a reflection of specific traditions and culture.

One central issue was and still is how to strike a just balance between creating and protecting equal opportunities for all on the one hand, and aiming for quality and excellence through selection and competition on the other – an issue which in the United States is labeled the “quality-equality issue.” This chapter presents an overview of the gradual development from elite education toward greater equality, particularly between 1950 and 1980, and the shifting emphasis back to quality from the 1980s onwards. But let us first outline a few characteristics of the Dutch higher education system.

Characterizing Dutch Higher Education

A first fundamental trait of Dutch higher education – as well as of primary and secondary education – is that it is primarily a public responsibility. This is the case in most continental European countries. In the Netherlands it means that the national government by law is responsible for the funding of higher education (in 2014 it covered about 80 percent of the cost) and – in connection to that – for monitoring its general quality.

This leads directly to a second characteristic, which is more specific for the Netherlands: the essential equality between all institutions of education, including those of higher education.