Improving study success and diversity in Dutch higher education using performance agreements

More and more governments have started to introduce elements of performance in the funding mechanisms for their higher education institutions. An example is a performance agreement: a contract signed between the funding authority and an individual higher education provider. In the Netherlands, a policy experiment involving performance agreements was concluded in 2016. We analyse whether the agreements actually have helped achieve the goals of improving student completion rates, educational quality and increasing the diversity in educational offerings. We present some indicators relating to these goals and discuss what can be learned from the performance agreements experiment in the Netherlands.