Staat van de student: tweehonderd jaar politieke geschiedenis van studiefinanciering in Nederland

This dissertation contains a history of public financial student support policies in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, from their establishment in 1815 until today. It focuses especially on the political and administrative decisions that led to actual policies. This history is divided in seven episodes during which policies had different goals and took different shapes. This way, the episodes reflect the changing role of the national government in Dutch society. Policy makers used financial student support as an instrument in their efforts to influence the course of social developments, with varying success. They tried to influence supply on the job market, to stimulate the development of individual talents and to advance social justice. Larger objectives were state formation, economic and cultural development and the emancipation of particular groups in society. Ever since the introduction of child benefits in the system in 1953, it has been impossible to tell whether student support is a form of education policy, income policy or social support. It has had close links with all three of them, causing reforms in one of these aspects to have unacceptable effects in the other. Public student support policy has become a complex administrative knot, still struggled with today.