Students must wait through bleak winter for overhauled support

Two of Europe’s largest student populations will have to wait until next year as their governments prepare major overhauls of financial support systems. 

Rising living costs are piling pressure on many governments to offer more generous help for students, but in Germany and France, student organisations want a total overhaul of the system. 

France’s Federation of General Student Associations (FAGE) recorded a 7.4 per cent year-on-year rise in living and study costs for non-scholarship students in August, the biggest rise in 20 years. 

“Everyone agrees on the observation that the aid system is not working, all political parties and all elected officials,” FAGE president Paul Mayaux told Times Higher Education. 

The federation wants student support to be indexed to inflation and extended to cover non-scholarship students who sit above the current cut-off, with housing their biggest cost. 

“Our organisation had to set up temporary housing arrangements to accommodate students who were on the street or who slept in campsites,” he said. 

France’s higher education ministry told THE that from September it will freeze rents in student accommodation and raise the value of housing benefits and scholarships by 3.5 and 4 per cent respectively. 

“We are not avoiding at all the question of a structural reform of solidarity in higher education. In accordance with the government’s commitments, an overhaul of the scholarship system is envisaged,” an official said, adding that consultations would begin “shortly”. 

Mr Mayaux said those increases would fall short of inflation and would still only benefit those on scholarships. “This is why the FAGE reaffirms the need for a structural reform,” he said, adding that a national contact point was also needed to make sure students took up all the forms of support they were eligible for. 

In Germany, federal education minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger cheered a 0.4 per cent increase in the number of students supported by the scholarship and loans system (BAföG), the first increase since 2012. 

But Lone Grotheer, a board member of the Free Union of Student Unions (FZS), said that the negligible increase in coverage showed the “urgent need for comprehensive structural reform” of the system.

The FZS cited research by Parity, an umbrella body for welfare organisations, which found that 30 per cent of German students live in poverty, while just 11 per cent are covered by BAföG. 

The 27th update to the 45-year-old system, approved by the coalition government in July, is designed to “significantly” expand those who are eligible, according to Ms Stark-Watzinger, but will not come into force until 2023. 

“BAföG is like a vintage car that worked well for many years, but is used less and little. Out of nostalgia, the federal government has a tinker with this old-timer, but without a fundamental reform, BAföG will end up as a museum piece,” said Ulrich Müller, head of policy studies at the Centre for Higher Education, a thinktank.

He said rather than being about money alone, the system needed to match contemporary study. “BAföG more and more collides with the reality of students’ life because of its norm conception: studying part-time is not allowed, but widespread; only a ‘normal period’ of study is financed, but it is too short for 66 per cent of the students; and nearly 10 per cent are studying at a private university, but BAföG doesn’t cover costs for tuition fees.” 

He said a new system should integrate BAföG and the various flavours of government-approved student loans in a flexible way that accommodates different speeds and passages of study and that he was “optimistic” Ms Stark-Watzinger would sketch out such a model next year.

ben.upton@timeshighereducation.com