The Dutch Ministry of Education has decided to allocate 3 million Euro to the Nuffic run scholarship programme Delta II. Delta II is a new programme that combines the old Delta programme, the Talent programme and the Huygens programme. The aim of the programme is to attract international top students to the Netherlands, by subsidising some 1 000 incoming students and almost 200 outgoing Dutch students. In this new programme, scholarships will be available also for students from private institutions.

The budget of Delta II is a part of a total of 10 million Euro allocated by the Ministry to internationalisation of higher education in 2006. Half of the total will be used to develop international centres of excellence, with the aim of increasing the number of top level students coming to the Netherlands by 650 every year. The overall aim is to reach the target of 14 000 international students in the Netherlands by 2010.