Work
Before entering politics, Ritzen worked, among other places, at the Erasmus Universiteit, Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen (now Radboud University), and at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1989 he became Minister of Education and Sciences in the cabinet Lubbers 3. In the same cabinet he was Minister of Welfare, Health, and Culture for a month in 1994. That same year, with the installation of the cabinet Kok 1, he became Minister of Education, Culture, and Sciences.
As a minister he introduced the OV-studentenkaart in 1990, a card giving free public transportation to students, and the Prestatiebeurs, a new form of student financing. The introduction of the Prestatiebeurs lead to great resistance from the LSVb.
After his last ministership he became one of the 30 vicepresidents of the Worldbank.
He has been president of Universiteit Maastricht from 2003 until February 2011.
Read more about this topic: Jo Ritzen
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“Our kids will develop a work ethic only if we require them to pay a portion of the cost of some of the things they want. They’ll learn to defer gratification the moment we stop routinely pulling out our wallets. And they’ll learn self-discipline only if we care enough to enforce reasonable limits.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“... work is only part of a man’s life; play, family, church, individual and group contacts, educational opportunities, the intelligent exercise of citizenship, all play a part in a well-rounded life. Workers are men and women with potentialities for mental and spiritual development as well as for physical health. We are paying the price today of having too long sidestepped all that this means to the mental, moral, and spiritual health of our nation.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“He will not idly dance at his work who has wood to cut and cord before nightfall in the short days of winter; but every stroke will be husbanded, and ring soberly through the wood; and so will the strokes of that scholar’s pen, which at evening record the story of the day, ring soberly, yet cheerily, on the ear of the reader, long after the echoes of his axe have died away.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)