White men and entrepreneurs make up the bulk of university supervisory boards, a situation which fails to reflect the student body, the Volkskrant says on Tuesday.

Some two-thirds of board members are male, while men account for fewer than half of students, the Volkskrant’s research shows.

There are just four women and no men with an ethnic minority background, even though there is a growing number of ethnic minority students.

Business

University supervisory boards are charged with monitoring the executive board and the university’s identity.

In total, 40 of 129 supervisory board members came from industry while just 21 were academics and 14 came from education.

Karl Dittrich, chairman of the Dutch university association, said that when university supervisory boards were set up some 20 years ago, academic institutions were focused on industry and business.

Now the emphasis is more on the quality of research and that will lead to a change in the composition of the boards over time, he told the paper.