The universities of Leiden, Delft and Rotterdam are planning to merge, the NRC reports on Friday, quoting university sources.

The paper says the universities were planning to make the announcement at the opening of the new academic year in September.
The merged organisation, which will be known as Leiden University, will have 55,000 students and 11,500 staff, excluding people employed by the Leiden and Erasmus teaching hospitals.
Best
The new university will be one of the best in the world, the paper says. All three currently score high marks in international comparisons in terms of their specific areas of expertise.
The merger will take six to eight years to complete, although how this process will be managed is still unclear, the paper says. All three universities have refused to comment.
Sijbold Noorda, the chairman of the Dutch university association VSNU, confirmed the plans are in the pipeline, the NRC said, but refused to describe it as a merger.
‘That sounds too corporate to me,’ he said. ‘This is the institutionalisation of an alliance. It is unique in the world for three universities to combine their power like this.’