The Netherlands is not a massive country – but it does have two national student representative bodies.
Each has its own member organisations, staff teams, five-person full-time boards, and ministerial access.
They compete for members, attention, and relevance. In the UK, that kind of duplication would produce faction fighting, briefing against, and endless debates about merger. Here, it produces friendship.
“I have much more contact with Maaike than I had expected beforehand,” says Sarah Evink, chair of the Interstedelijk Studenten Overleg:
We are colleagues, but also friends. You fight for the same things and stand up for the same people.
Maaike Krom, chair of the Landelijke Studentenvakbond, agrees:
The LSVb focuses more on taking action, while the ISO is more involved in lobbying… But there’s little point in fighting each other; we have so much to gain.
It’s Day 5 of the Wonkhe SUs Rhineland study tour – five days whizzing around Germany, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands with around 35 UK students’ union officers and staff.
Reforming the welcome
We started the day in Enschede, at the University of Twente – a campus university in the east of the Netherlands with around 12,000 students, most of them in STEM disciplines.
We’ve covered Twente extensively on Wonkhe before – the covenant model that gives the Student Union policy-making authority over everything from sports to housing, the party system for University Council elections, the astonishing Create Tomorrow case competition, the flexwoningen container housing, the “Look After Your Friend” peer mental health training.
We’ve also looked at its study associations (think academic societies on steroids) in a separate explainer.
Here we’ve focused on two things – what’s happening to the Kick-In, and arts and culture.
The Kick-In is Twente’s introduction programme – and it’s unlike anything in the UK. Nine days of activities for bachelor students (six for masters), entirely organised by students through a six-person committee that works essentially full-time for an academic year to plan and deliver it.
There’s a student-led coordinating body with 200 crew volunteers, a bespoke digital registration system, and a massive tent on campus that serves as the focal point for parties and major events.
The model dates to 1963, when the institution was still the Technische Hogeschool Twente. The name changed in 2009 – “Kick-In” replacing the original “IK” (Introductie Kommissie) – but the governance structure has remained consistent. The Student Union coordinates, the university supports, and nobody else runs competing programmes.
The heart of it is the “do-group” system. On day one, new students choose a group of 8-12 peers from the same programme, led by two trained senior students – “do-group parents” in the current terminology, though older language referred to “dads” and “granddads” guiding their “sons.”
The do-group then experiences the entire Kick-In together. Meals, activities, competitions, parties. The claim is that “the students from your do-group will remain your friends for the rest of your student life.” That’s a strong claim. But the structure is designed to make it plausible – sustained contact across nine days, shared challenging experiences, senior student facilitation.
What does nine days look like? Day one is registration, an opening fair with over 100 associations, do-group formation, a parade from campus to city centre, parties until 4am. Day two brings a culture brunch, workshops, the Storming of the Bastille – a spectacular obstacle course involving mud, waterslides, and team challenges – then a cantus (a traditional Dutch student activity combining drinking, singing, and “eloquence”).
Day three moves to the city centre for a scavenger hunt, terraces and pub quizzes, water sports dinner, parties across multiple venues. Day four is sports day, where students try every sport, followed by a foam party, pool party, and sports party running simultaneously.
Days five to seven are handed over to study associations for programme-specific activities, often including residential camps. Day eight has dinner, an introduction concert in the city centre, movie night. Day nine wraps up with an activism lunch, do-group battles, food truck festival, closing party.
It costs €87.50 for bachelor students, €55 for masters. Some dinners and activities cost extra. Faculties may charge additional contributions for the study-related programme days. About 1,900 students participated in 2024 – 1,300 bachelor students (roughly 75 per cent of new intake) and 600 masters students (only about 25 per cent). That master participation rate worries the organisers. And it’s under review.
Reforming the welcome
A working group was established in June 2025 – three university staff, three students, chaired by an academic – with an explicit remit. Reduce cost and intensity, improve the connection between the central programme and faculty activities, and deliver savings of at least €50,000.
The methodology was interesting. Rather than starting from the current programme and asking what to cut, they started by asking what the Kick-In’s goals actually are. They landed on four themes – introducing student life, familiarising students with the study environment, orienting them to the living environment, and supporting wellbeing.
The most material proposed change is to shorten the Kick-In from eight days to five or six. Students experience the existing format as too intense – and reducing duration forces the rest of the programme to be rebuilt around a smaller footprint. It’s not just trimming edges. It’s a fundamental redesign.
The working group is also proposing a “Kick-In camping” option – students could camp on UT fields during the introduction week. The rationale is partly practical (students don’t need to find sleeping space or travel home after activities) and partly participation-focused (a campsite could increase involvement and generate additional income).
We’ve seen introduction camping in Hungary and Slovakia on previous tours – the gólyatáborok model, where freshers camps are held off-site with overnight stays built in. But those are separate events, usually in the countryside. This would be on campus, integrated into the standard welcome programme. It would require safety assessments and Executive Board approval, and isn’t expected before 2027 – but as a direction of travel, it’s striking.
The 2025 Kick-In has already introduced some wellbeing-focused additions – a yoga session, a part-time job market. After a reported incident of transgressive behaviour linked to a foam party, there’s been strengthened incident-reporting information and clearer signposting of safeguarding routes.
The big tent – which some had suggested removing to save money – is being retained as essential infrastructure for speeches, parties, and shared activities. Instead, revenue-side options are being explored. Opening some parties beyond first-year students so entrance fees can be charged. Shifting to longer-term sponsorship contracts to stabilise funding.
[PHOTO: Kick-In activities or the campus during introduction week]
The theatre on a tech campus
For a largely STEM university, Twente takes arts and culture surprisingly seriously. The Student Union’s Strategic Plan 2024–2027 explicitly includes sports and culture as a policy-making domain – not just an activity area, but something the SU is mandated to develop strategy for.
The Vrijhof is the key facility – a building on campus housing multiple theatre spaces (Agora is the largest, with a retractable grandstand), rehearsal studios, exhibition rooms, and the university library. There’s a darkroom managed by the photography association Foton Arts. There are pop studios where students can jam with their band, drum studios (you need a drumming certificate or evidence of lessons), piano studios, a ballet studio.
The exhibition infrastructure stands out. There’s a large space with multiple hanging walls and floor space for installations, plus a smaller intimate gallery. The university maintains an “art library” – around 200 works available for free for employees and students to borrow for their rooms or offices, with a larger collection in circulation. Not just attending performances, but living with art.
Vrijhof Culture runs a programme of courses each academic year – in cooperation with the local Kaliber Kunstenschool, Volksuniversiteit Twente, and AKI/ArtEZ. The FAM Culture 2024–2028 document (the four-year framework for cultural associations) sets out the ecosystem. Nineteen cultural associations under the umbrella body Apollo, minimum viable size of 20 members, professional instruction as the standard, student instruction optional but supported for beginner dance groups.
The SU’s portfolio holder for Sports and Culture, Lukas Binnekamp, works with the Sports Centre, Vrijhof Culture & Events, Sports Umbrella Twente and Apollo to maintain and improve facilities. The external relationships are telling – the position involves contact with the Twente Ice-rink, Aquadrome, the City Theatre and Enschede’s Music Centre. This is campus culture connected to city culture.
And there’s something we haven’t seen elsewhere. Sports & Culture is offering students an entire evening at the Agora theatre for their own performance, concert, or cultural festival. Dream, plan, stage. Submit your idea by January 15 and make it happen. That really is school play syndrome, operating at scale.
A lounge of one’s own
From Enschede we headed to Wageningen – home of Wageningen University & Research, one of the most internationally-focused universities in the Netherlands. We were there to meet ESN Wageningen and ISOW, the two main international student associations.
The timing feels pointed.
Just before Christmas, the UK government announced it will rejoin Erasmus+ from January 2027 – six years after Boris Johnson pulled us out, claiming it didn’t offer value for money. Over 100,000 UK participants could benefit in the first year alone. EU students will be able to study at UK universities under Erasmus+ terms, paying domestic rather than international fees. UK students will be able to study in the EU without additional costs. It’s quite the U-turn.
But the infrastructure that makes Erasmus+ work isn’t just the funding and the bilateral agreements. It’s the peer support networks that help exchange students navigate unfamiliar cities, find housing, make friends, understand local systems. In the Netherlands and across Europe, that infrastructure is the Erasmus Student Network.
ESN Wageningen is their local section – part of a network of over 500 sections in 46 countries. They organise social, cultural and sports activities, run a Buddy Program that groups new students into “families” of 10-15 with trained mentors, provide practical support with bikes and orientation, and generally embody the ESN principle of “Students Helping Students.”
In the UK, ESN currently has just 14-15 sections. At the time of the 2016 Brexit evidence submission to Parliament, they had 21. The network atrophied when Erasmus+ went away – why maintain exchange student support infrastructure when there are no exchange students?
Rebuilding that capacity before January 2027 is not a trivial task. ESN sections are volunteer-run student associations that need institutional recognition, space, funding relationships, and – here’s the catch – students who’ve been on exchanges themselves and want to pay it forward. That pipeline has been broken for five years.
The terminology at Wageningen needs unpacking. “ESN” is the Erasmus Student Network – the Europe-wide organisation. “ISOW” is the International Student Organisation Wageningen – an independent association exclusive to Wageningen, founded in 1996, with a “home away from home” mission focused on cultural exchange.
Both organisations share a physical space on campus – the Global Lounge. It’s behind Campus Plaza, described as a “place for students by students” – somewhere to relax, play music, be creative, all free during the day. In the evenings, ISOW and ESN organise activities. There are “living room hours” (Tuesday to Thursday lunchtimes, just to chill) and “office hours” (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday evenings, for admin – picking up membership cards, making payments).
The Global Lounge works as a hybrid. Part social drop-in space, part association office, part event venue. ISOW runs dance and fitness classes there, while language courses tend to use Forum – WUR’s large central campus building. The university lists both ESN Wageningen and ISOW in its official “international associations” directory, which gives them a degree of institutional recognition.
ESN’s model is high-volume events plus a structured Buddy Program – small “family” groups of 10-15 students, led by buddy mentors, completing challenges and activities that accumulate points in the “Battle of the Buddy Families.” It’s integration through competition.
ISOW’s model is different – volunteer-taught courses (languages, dance), cultural exchange events, collaboration with country-specific student associations. Their mascot is a panda, which feels relevant somehow.
The Global Lounge itself is represents something we see less and less of in the UK. Dedicated space for international student association activity, controlled by the associations themselves, integrated into campus life rather than bolted on as a service.
With 100,000 UK participants potentially entering Erasmus+ in year one, and EU students arriving at UK universities expecting the kind of peer support network they’d get anywhere else in Europe, the question of who provides that support – and how – suddenly matters again.
Two unions, one meeting
And so to Leiden, where ISO and LSVb have come to meet us – bringing Dutch national student politics to the tour rather than the other way around.
The Netherlands has two national student organisations. And they’re not rivals trying to destroy each other – they’re friends who coordinate constantly while representing different bits of the student movement.
ISO is a federation of student councils. Its 40+ member organisations are the elected representatives who sit on university and faculty governance bodies. Think of it as a national network connecting everyone who holds a student governor role. When ISO speaks, it speaks for students in institutional decision-making.
LSVb is a federation of local student unions. Its nine member unions are organisations that students join directly – closer to the UK model of students’ unions as membership bodies. When LSVb speaks, it speaks for organised student activism.
Both have five-person boards who take a year out of their studies to work full-time, supported by staff teams of around 15-18 student employees. Both are formal consultation partners with the Ministry of Education. Both compete for attention and legitimacy. And both are based in Utrecht, within walking distance of the university department that produces an improbable number of national student politicians.
The division of labour is functional. As Maaike Krom, LSVb’s chair, puts it:
LSVb focuses more on taking action, while ISO is more involved in lobbying.
But when it matters, they work together.
The clearest recent example is the campaign against the “langstudeerboete” – a proposed €3,000 penalty for students taking longer than the standard duration plus one year to complete their degree. LSVb organised the street protest and petition (131,000 signatures). ISO worked the parliamentary lobbying. By December 2024, the penalty was off the table.
Students, teachers and staff have been working for months signing petitions, coming to demonstrations and talking to politicians,” said the outgoing ISO chair.
I am happy that we can organise demonstrations with more than 20,000 people and set up petitions signed by a hundred thousand people.
The legal infrastructure
There’s a third piece of the system we haven’t mentioned – the national student legal bureau, which shares ISO’s office in Utrecht and operates as its legal partner. It’s run by five law students taking a year out of their studies to handle education law cases.
The bureau provides free legal advice and representation to students. The key thing is that it focuses on collective cases. When they spot a problem affecting multiple students, they look for a collective legal solution, working with specialist education law advocates.
This isn’t just advice-giving. In 2018, the bureau took Erasmus University Rotterdam to court over its requirement that first-year students obtain all 60 credits for a positive study progress decision, rather than the more common 45. “It looks like EUR has manipulated the binding study advice,” said the then-chair. “We want the court to rule on whether this strict standard is acceptable.”
The case went to the Appeals Tribunal for Higher Education, which ultimately ruled the system was “not manifestly unreasonable” – though earlier interim rulings had questioned its legality. Win or lose, the point is that students had the capacity to mount a legal challenge at all.
The bureau also coordinates twelve local student legal clinics at individual universities, staffed by volunteer law students who handle queries on tenancy law, employment law, and consumer law alongside education cases. National network, local delivery.
And then there’s Studierechten.com – a joint project launched on International Students’ Day 2016 at the Ministry of Education. The site is essentially a self-help guide to education law. Explanations of the key legal documents. Descriptions of the bodies students can appeal to. Step-by-step guides for common problems – receiving a negative study progress decision, disputing an exam grade, challenging compulsory study costs beyond tuition fees, student finance problems, enrolment disputes.
The framing matters. “Stand up for your study rights!” The assumption is that students have rights, that institutions sometimes breach them, and that the appropriate response is to know the law and use it.
Students often don’t know what their rights are, and especially – where to find them. Students often think the institution must know best and accept decisions.
The whole thing is premised on the idea that this deference is a problem to be solved.
[PHOTO: The Studierechten.com website or the legal bureau team]
Joint campaigns
In September 2025, both ISO and LSVb joined with the vocational student organisation and the secondary school pupils’ organisation to present a manifesto to parliament.
More and more students can barely make ends meet. It hurts to hear students say they lie awake worrying about their financial situation.
In October 2025, both organisations joined universities and colleges in a joint statement against proposed budget cuts that would not compensate higher education for price and wage increases, while primary and secondary education would get full adjustment. “Don’t hollow out education.”
In December 2025, LSVb participated in a national education strike.
Now is precisely the moment to make a fist.
The organisations run separate policy areas too. LSVb has a dedicated housing campaign – more rooms, lower rents – with specific asks around funding for student housing providers, penalties for illegal overcharging, and extending housing benefit to students in shared accommodation.
ISO has focused heavily on internship allowances, arguing for a mandatory minimum. ISO also commissions research – in December 2025, they funded a study into actual causes of study delay, using the findings to push back against “fake solutions” like stricter progress requirements.
Both organisations are also looking for their next boards. Applications open in spring, with the new boards taking over in summer. The pitch is interesting – a year of access to ministers and parliamentary debates, managing a team of staff, representing hundreds of thousands of students. The caution is also interesting.
It doesn’t have to slow down your studies – it just depends on how crazy you want to make it.
The obvious question
Why two organisations? ISO emerged in 1973 from university council representatives wanting to share experience across institutions. LSVb emerged in 1983 from local student unions wanting a national voice. They represent different bits of the student movement – participation structures versus membership organisations – and neither has absorbed the other.
The Dutch cabinet fell twice during the current board year. The coalition formation is ongoing. Education is a campaign issue. ISO and LSVb have both been explicit that they want to be involved in coalition talks.
We are ready for it, so give us a call”.
We’re all on our way home now. Five days, six countries, something like thirty institutions visited. The notes are extensive, the photos are numerous, the exhaustion is real.
The Dutch model isn’t straightforwardly exportable. The legal framework is different – participation rights embedded in legislation, funding structures we don’t have, a tradition of consultation that treats student organisations as serious interlocutors. But some things translate.
The Global Lounge at Wageningen – a dedicated space for international student associations, controlled by the students themselves. The Kick-In reforms at Twente – a willingness to fundamentally redesign a beloved programme when the evidence suggests it’s too intense. The Vrijhof – a commitment to arts and culture infrastructure on a STEM campus. The ISO-LSVb relationship – organisations with overlapping mandates choosing cooperation over competition.
And the national picture. Volunteer teams, research capacity, ministerial access, the ability to commission evidence and shape parliamentary debates. The ability to organise 20,000 people for a protest and 130,000 signatures for a petition. Impressive stuff.
