Vereniging van Universiteiten


The Vereniging van Universiteiten of the Netherlands is a trade group of ten government-funded universities, three special universities, and the Open University of the Netherlands. It formed as the Vereniging van Samenwerkende Nederlandse Universiteiten in 1985, as a successor to the .

Organization

The VSNU acts as a consultative body for its members. It is also the mouthpiece for universities in the national media. It represents university education and research in the Cabinet of the Netherlands, the House of Representatives, and the European Union, and in price negotiations with academic publishers such as Elsevier, Springer, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. It is the employers' organization of Dutch universities.
The association was located in Utrecht until 2005. The institutions that are important for university policy, however, are often headquartered in The Hague. To optimize the interests of the universities towards these institutions, the VSNU moved to The Hague in March 2005.
Almost every country in the world has a university association that brings together common interests. There is also an umbrella of European university associations and of universities worldwide.

Members

The association consists of the following 14 institutions: