Towards financial resilience

A theme that will require much attention in 2024 is keeping student numbers up. The number of Dutch pupils obtaining a VWO diploma is declining slightly due to demographic developments. Moreover, fewer and fewer students are choosing a STEM profile. Several study programmes will be affected by this, as such a profile is required to start a technical university bachelor programme.

And because the elaboration of the national discussion on internationalisation may lead to new barriers for international students, we see a risk that fewer international students will choose a programme at UT in the coming years.

It is important to keep student intake at the current level. This is a realistic prospect, but will require serious effort. Within all units, there will be more attention in the coming year to increase our attractiveness and visibility as a university. A concrete example of a recently deployed action is that we are focusing more on the regions in the west of the country, as there is great potential there.

The second priority is future-proofing our education. In particular, we are looking at opportunities to make the daily practice of our education more efficient and effective. This is already a priority given the work and performance pressures experienced by staff and students, and is also relevant to UT's financial situation. Among other things, we will evaluate the practical implementation of our Twente Education Model (TOM). Principles such as project-based and challenged-based learning are not in question, but we will look at how the implementation can be better tailored to the needs of students, lecturers and UT as a whole. This should improve the sustainability of (especially) our undergraduate education.

We also remain firmly committed to Lifelong Learning (LLL), because we see a great social demand for it. And with our expertise in both science and practice, we can play an important role. From a financial perspective, this is a significant development that contributes to the robustness of the university as a knowledge partner for society. UT-wide, proper support must be provided for this form of education, so that faculties can use its opportunities optimally. To this end, we are working closely with various partners inside and outside the university.

In 2024, we will focus even more than before on increasing income from third-party activities, as this has a positive effect on the university as a whole. This includes, for example, subsidised or contract research. Comparisons with other universities show there seems to be room to increase income from these activities.

However, it will require a considerable joint effort by faculties, departments and scientific institutes to increase UT's earning capacity permanently. They will work together to increase their clout and bring more focus to their activities and support for them. This will enable them to make even better use of opportunities to conduct innovative research for third parties.

In the coming period, the University of Twente will further elaborate on the choices and measures arising from the budget. You can read more about the main priorities in our earlier news item. The key principles, as formulated in the vision document Shaping2030, remain leading.

Maintaining the quality of education is a high priority. In national comparisons such as the National Student Survey, the UT has consistently scored among the best universities in recent years. UT wants to maintain and continue to strengthen this leading position in student appreciation. This calls for priority in staff deployment, but also the deployment of resources to sustain educational facilities in the broadest sense.

The follow-up will also explicitly consider the future-proofing of choices: are they in line with our vision? Do they contribute to our long-term goals and build on what we have achieved in the past in a proper manner?

We are also working on the resilience of our organisation, to be able to respond adequately to changes in the future. The current financial situation and the outlook for the future, for example, due to lower student intake, demand agility and flexibility. Together with the departments and faculties, we will give this issue a lot of attention in the coming period.

Achieving the intentions as formulated in the budget requires active steering at all levels. Monitoring the progress will play an important role at both university and faculty and service department level, so that the Executive Board, faculty boards and service directors can make timely adjustments when the situation demands it. The participatory bodies, such as the University Council and the faculty and service boards, will each be able to discuss this in their domain. In this way, we jointly ensure that we set a realistic course that leads to what we aim for and limit unwanted side effects.

The Taskforce Influx works in an agile way, together with relevant colleagues from the faculties and services, to increase the student influx of Bachelor's and Master's students. Concrete improvements are being realised in areas such as the UT application process, informing high schools and optimizing our recruitment websitepages. New recruitment campaigns are also being set up, such as the one aimed at parents of potential students. We expect to see the first effects with the 2025/2026 influx.

Lead: Joost Steppé

The assignment of this Building Block consists of two parts; a qualitative and financial part. First step is to provide insight into the costs of our education. Based on a gap analysis, the team together with Tanya Bondarouk, Lieke Schreel, SP colleagues and in collaboration with the faculties, then looks at what follow-up steps are needed to come up with a concrete proposal for future-proof education that contributes to a strong profile for UT.

Step one will be completed at the end of August. The GAP analysis will take place in October. From October, the next steps will take place in close collaboration with the faculties.

Lead: Tanya Bondarouk

This Building Block has been overtaken by time: given the current circumstances, UT will not start any new programmes, apart from those that are already in the start-up phase or in the planning to start. The assignment has therefore been changed to "revision of current study programmes".

In close collaboration with Building Block Future Proof Education and Building Block Influx, this Building Block designs a framework for our future education. Think of the needs of (potential) students, contribution to the UT's impact domains, cost-effectiveness, etc. We are also looking at how we can better streamline this process within our organisation with the aim of bringing more focus to our educational profile and increasing quality.

 Lead: Tom Veldkamp

Funding from our second and third funding streams (grants for research and strategic collaborations with industry) must be increased. This Building Block focuses, among other things, on encouraging people to act more entrepreneurial in this area by, for example, organising research weeks. In concrete terms, a guideline has now been issued about the contribution margin. By raising these standards, UT increases its income. In addition, contracts are implemented faster and better monitored.

Lead: Geert de Wulf

Further elaboration will follow.

This Building Block will be tackled together with the assignment of Building Block 11: Assessment of interfaculty units. It is being investigated in which areas the faculties can work together to avoid double costs and how the strategic impulse programmes (SIPs) can be used in a smarter way.

Initial savings have already been achieved by terminating a number of contracts with externally hired experts. The intended savings are M€ 3 in the CSB (Central Strategic Budget).In September, the Strategic Council advises the Executive Board on Building Blocks 6 and 11.

Lead: Geert Dewulf

The aim is to strengthen the UT's research infrastructure, so that UT has an attractive force for companies, students and researchers with which higher revenues can be generated in the longer term through research money, subsidies and education money.

The first step is to make an inventory of the infrastructure available within UT to determine what is needed to strengthen the infrastructure. Consider, for example, more collaboration so that savings can be made possible.

Lead: Hans Hilgenkamp

Learning has increasingly become an ongoing process. The major, continuously changing societal challenges require professionals who keep up with the latest in their field. This continuous learning attitude is part of UT's DNA. It is therefore our ambition to equip professionals to work on social issues with a High Tech Human Touch approach. Various initiatives are already underway within the UT. In addition, the Lifelong Learning quartermaster team has delivered a plan that is currently being implemented.

The focus is now on bringing the various initiatives together and setting up and professionalising both the administrative and substantive side of Lifelong Learning. The business case shows that Lifelong Learning will yield a profit in the long run, and that it is essential for UT to grow further. More information on the topicpage Lifelong Learning. 

Lead: Freek van der Meer

What strategic partnerships do we need to raise our profile? That's what this Building Block is all about. Various elements are important for this, such as our desired reputation, our educational and research profile as well as an overview of our current strategic partners. In the Executive Board of 8 July, a model was developed on the basis of which strategic choices can be made. With this model:

• we can bind talent in a more targeted way;
• recruit students and partners for research applications;
• support other Building Blocks, such as increasing 2nd and 3rd cash flow and influx;
• the number of strategic partnerships has been reduced from five to three, namely: University of Münster, University of Waterloo and University Tecnológico de Monterrey. 

Lead: Freek van der Meer

The current financial situation increases the urgency to be agile as an organisation. Multiple changes are needed to be a more effective and efficient university. This Building Block looks at what is currently holding us back from changing and what preconditions can be improved in order to jointly embrace a more agile way of working. This includes decision-making, systems, processes, and more collaboration.

In September, a proposal will be presented to the Strategic Board in which several scenarios have been worked out.

Lead: Bart Koopman

Over the years, various interfaculty units have been set up at UT, like University College Atlas, Honours programmes, the Design lab, TGS and Studium Generale. Within an interfaculty unit, different faculties participate, each unit with a specific assignment. This Building Block makes an inventory of how much UT is currently investing in these units, what results the units are achieving and what possibilities there are to organise this more efficiently.

The Strategic Board will discuss this information in September in order to advise the Executive Board on how to proceed further with the interfaculty units.

Lead: Geert Dewulf

This involves working on synchronising administrative processes to work more efficiently. With the AFAS, Proactis and Unit4 systems, the first steps have been taken to implement UT-wide systems and associated processes. More synchronisation provides a more standardised way of reporting that immediately provides better insight into possible savings in terms of deployment, costs, hours, etc.

Lead: Mert Alberts

Within UT, we hire external staff in both faculties and service departments. This also includes Student Jobs. This is a major cost item for UT. HR and Finance, in collaboration with the faculties and service departments, are looking at where the work could also be done without external hiring, in order to make quick savings. This building block drives and signals, but the savings comes from the units themselves.

In the meantime, a (temporary) stop on hiring students and external parties has been announced by the Executive Board on July 10, 2024. Each service department and faculty have to look immediately at how to continue without using external hiring and Student Jobs.

Lead: Dennis van Zijl

Proportionally, UT employs considerably more support staff than other Dutch universities. To achieve a healthier balance, the service departments have already set up a procedure to jointly determine whether vacancies can be filled. In addition, this Building Block, together with the faculties, maps out how many support staff are in which positions. This is done at both faculty level, cross-faculty level and UT-wide. An initial analysis shows that the share of support staff has risen sharply in education in particular because of additional legislation and regulations in recent years. Efficiency gains seem to be possible here.

Completion of the inventory takes place in the summer. The educational process will be tackled together with the Building Block Future Proof Education.

Lead: Mariska Giessen together with Hans Oeloff

Currently, data is kept in different places in the organisation. This makes it difficult to draw conclusions. Having one reliable data source is essential here. This Building Block outlines, on the one hand, the data governance structure needed for this and, on the other hand, what data is needed to give faculties and UT better insights and thus better steering possibilities. This Building Block does not in itself deliver direct savings, but it ensures that we can monitor and adjust progress on other savings. By gaining better insight into various educational, research and operational data, UT can better steer for potential savings.

The Building Block proposal is on the UCB agenda in September.

Lead: Derek-Jan Fikkers

Based on the current challenge within and outside UT, it is necessary for managers and teams to strengthen themselves. HR develops Masterclasses to strengthen managers in their management skills based on the leadership framework, Topics such as Finance, Social Safety, and leadership communication are discussed here. An offer will also be created that managers and their team can use in the context of team development. This offer is already ready and offered after the Strategy Day for Senior Management on 15 February via https://www.utwente.nl/en/ctd/Workshops/. The next step is to integrate this offer into UT's regular offer for teams.

The leadership training courses will start after the summer holidays.

Lead: Hans Oeloff

Within UT, there are many colleagues who do not take up their leave hours. This does not only affect their well-being. but the leave hours also have a financial value for which, for example, UT has to make a reservation to pay out the leave days. Currently, the amount involved is 23 million euros. On an annual basis, 1.8 million euros is paid out to departing colleagues. The aim of this Building Block is to make employees aware of the importance of taking holidays, but also of the financial consequences for UT of not recording leave.  Concrete actions are:

• Linking registration within AFAS and Unit4 so that registration only has to be done in one place;
• Develop additional leave policy;
• Inform employees about the guidelines around leave;
• Managers receive a monthly overview to monitor excess leave and discuss it with the relevant employees where necessary.

One and a half years ago, the first actions were taken to reduce reserved leave. This has now resulted in a 20% increase in the number of leaves written. This building block will be completed by HR after the summer break, embedded in the regular business operations and planning & control cycle.

Lead: Hans Oeloff

The UT has a large number of licenses. Some of this is hardly used, while there are (high) costs in return. For other licenses, there may be more interesting alternatives This Building Block focuses on reducing all licenses within UT. Short-term result is actually reducing the number of licenses and eliminating duplication. In addition, the Building Block focuses on raising awareness within UT to handle licenses responsibly.

Lead: Mert Alberts

The reason for this Building Block is a possible saving of 325,000 euros if travelling with the NS business card for business trips is converted from first to second class. It was decided to broaden this scope and to review the entire travel expense policy, in close coordination with the mobility policy because of the large overlap. To this end, an initial analysis was carried out, based on which the project group consisting of representatives of CFM, HR and FIN will further elaborate concrete actions after the holidays.

Lead: Hans Oeloff

In this Building Block we are working on making better use of the talents and capacity of employees and thus better distribute workload and reduce the number of vacancies. To be able to make a match, it is necessary to know who is available where and what they can be used for. To this end, HR is looking at various 'Skill Matching initiatives', feedback mechanisms and possible integration with strategic personnel planning.

Lead: Hans Oeloff