Responding to parliamentary questions from the CDA and SP about the harmful effects of the Innovation Impulse for the three TUs, Plasterk says that some universities may be focusing on other subsidies and consequently earn smaller portions of the Veni, Vidi and Vici subsidies. Yet he adds that it could also mean that the TUs have submitted relatively poorer applications. He denies that the Innovation Impulse works out to the disadvantage of the specific research areas of the TUs. However, he does expect that it may be beneficial for these three institutions that the social use of research has been weighed also in the assessments since 2009.

Rector Magnificus Hans van Duijn disagrees entirely with the vision presented by Plasterk. “It is a fact that a large portion of the research at the TUs, the so-called designing and constructive sciences, are simply not given any chance in the NWO Innovation Impulse, or hardly at all. This has nothing to do with quality, but everything with the fact that the assessment and selection mechanisms used by the NWO are simply not appropriate for the genuine assessment of high quality in the design engineering sciences.” (FvO)/.