Nyenrode’s Amsterdam head steps down after complaints

Photo: Google Street View
Photo: Google Street View

The head of Nyenrode university’s New Business School has stepped down indefinitely following complaints about his behaviour during a recent study trip to China, the NRC reports.

Anton Busselman heads the private university’s Amsterdam unit based on the city’s Keizersgracht canal. He has stepped down while an investigation is undertaken into the claims, the university confirmed to the paper.

The complaint is made in a letter from two second year students, who say Busselman and two of his colleagues frequently drank too much during the trip and one of them ‘had to vomit in public several times’, the paper says.

The letter also claims students took prostitutes to their hotel rooms and were cheered by the leadership the following day. In addition, the letter refers to Busselman inviting young women to sleep with him, the high absenteeism rate and the lack of strategy and day-to-day leadership at the college.

Busselman has headed the NNBS since February 2015. Prior to that he ran the Luzac private school group in Amsterdam. The NNBS offers a three-year bachelor’s degree in ‘new business and business administration’.

A spokesman for Nyenrode told the Parool that the students who wrote the letter were not on the trip themselves and that research is needed to separate fact from fiction. The investigation, by an independent committee, is expected to take two months.

Thank you for donating to DutchNews.nl.

We could not provide the Dutch News service, and keep it free of charge, without the generous support of our readers. Your donations allow us to report on issues you tell us matter, and provide you with a summary of the most important Dutch news each day.

Make a donation