Post-war Dutch society, the universities and the corps

There were considerable structural and cultural differences between Dutch universities and the US/UK ones historically and into recent decades. Also, in Dutch-speaking Flanders in the north of Belgium, the universities and elite student societies had a strong historical affinity with the Netherlands (to be discussed later). In the Netherlands from the mid-1970s and until recently there was automatic university entry for all school leavers of a certain level; there were near-unlimited grants and puny fees; and there was no fixed term for completing a degree. Alongside the current 14 universities there is also a second sector of 41 ‘applied’ institutions: the hogescholen or ‘high schools’ (which are not be confused with US high schools), which are within higher education but do not formally have the title ‘university’. Moreover, the corpora – once anathema to the many leftish students in the radical ‘red’ 1970s (Verbij, 2005) – have staged something of a comeback and are now also found in those ‘applied’ hogescholen, which are the equivalent of ‘polytechnics’ (mentioned earlier).

In those new corpora from 1814 onwards nearly all students in the university were members of a corps; and the few students who remained outside the corpora were dubbed ‘nihilists’. As with traditional aristocratic society, the corpora were based on rites, rituals, hierarchy, a specific vocabulary, nostalgia and unquestioned custom. Internally there was strict selection along with a formal hierarchy based on seniority and with elaborate rules relating to privileges, conduct and discipline. In the Utrecht Studenten Corps (Utrecht Student’s Corps; USC), the ‘senators’ with a leading function had certain privileges while the ‘president’ had the most, including a posh car with a chauffeur (Fennema, 2015, p 15). Those traditional Dutch corpora – as with the older US, UK and Belgian clubs – were exclusively male establishments ostensibly comprising ‘sophisticated gentlemen’. For instance, women were strictly forbidden in the USC building and were warned of dire consequences if they did enter; the exception, it was claimed, was for sex workers who were invited in occasionally (Fennema, 2015, p 39).