Dutch companies have written to education minister Jet Bussemaker urging her to boost the standard of Dutch university and college education, the Volkskrant reports on Thursday.

The two big Dutch employers’ organisations VNO-NCW and MKB Nederland say they are unhappy with the quality of the Dutch higher education system. Their report is in the hands of the Volkskrant.

‘The enormous increase in the number of students has been at the cost of the quality,’ the organisations say in their report. ‘The challenge now is to improve the quality of education and increase the number of highly-educated graduates in the coming years.’

‘Eventually, 20% of university funding could be made dependent on their performance,’ the employers say. That figure is currently 7% and depends on a variety of statistics, from how fast students complete their degrees to the number of teaching hours. The rest of university funding is based on the number of students they attract.

The employers’ input comes at a time when university students and professors have been calling for more independence and less focus on performance.

The current system of university funding is due to be evaluated next year.