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:
“Most of our platitudes notwithstanding, self-deception remains the most difficult deception. The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that very well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)
“We didn’t want any men in our group. They drink their loans, they don’t work their stores. Why should we have to pay for their irresponsibilities?”
—Brachiate Guioth De Espinosa, Colombian storekeeper. As quoted in the New York Times, p. A6 (July 15, 1994)
“But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,—alone,
‘As all must be,’ I said within my heart,
‘Whether they work together or apart.’”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)