Dutch education agency indirectly discriminated against students with diverse background

The Education Executive Agency (DUO) has indirectly discriminated against migrant students with fraud controls, said caretaker Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf after an independent investigation by PwC. These students were more frequently screened to see if they actually lived in their homes, and not with their parents, to determine if they were rightfully collecting an extra grant to help pay for the cost of living away from family.

In deciding to check a home, DUO employees first looked at the distance between the student's home and where their parents lived. This distance is usually shorter when it concerns students from immigrant families and those with an ethnically diverse background. The student's background was not considered when deciding to visit a home.

Iw was still discriminatory, since the decision to inspect a student used characteristics more common among those with a diverse background, Dijkgraaf said. The minister has apologized for this.

It is not just about the distance to parents but also other features that were a part of the selection process for checks. Employees also looked to see whether the youngsters lived in a student house. They saw the chances of fraud as more minor if this was the case. With this, students with a diverse background were disadvantaged as there was a lower chance that they were living in a student house.

"You can expect the government to provide solid substantiation as to why criteria are used, but that has not happened," said a spokesperson for the minister.

Secondary vocational education (MBO) students also received more visits, because they were the only ones able to apply for a non-resident grant during the period when student loans replaced grants from 2015 through 2023. During that period, students in academic and applied sciences universities did not qualify for the grant.

The likelihood of fraud was seen as being unfairly high for MBO students between 2012 and 2015, as well. DUO's reasoning was that this group of students had less of a need to leave their parental home due to the large number of MBO institutions. This assumption also turned out to be unsubstantiated.

Earlier this week, the parliamentary inquiry committee investigating government fraud policy warned that a scandal similar to the childcare allowance scandal could happen again.