VLIR has recently reported on the plans of the Flemish minister of Education, Vandenbroucke, to set up a committee to formulate recommendations in order to optimize the functioning of Flemish higher education. This committee has now brought out her report Optimizing and rationalising higher education in Flanders.

Following the conclusions of the report, every bachelor programme has to count a minimum of 80 students in 2012 and 115 students in 2015. Study programmes that don’t reach these standards will have to rationalise, e.g. by reducing the number of options or collapsing parts of the programme. Furthermore, until 2011, no new study programmes can be set up. These recommendations concern professional as well as academic bachelor programmes.