GERMANY: Scepticism over new student finance deal

The German parliament has approved an increase in financial support for students as well as a new grants system for the specially gifted. The new measure has yet to gain the backing of the Upper House, representing the state governments. Their approval is highly uncertain.

"Young people should be able to rely on opting for good education not foundering on financial obstacles, and on special efforts made in training and education being rewarded," said Christian Democrat Education Minister Annette Schavan.

Federal support via the Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz or BAFöG, the federal student finance Act, is based half on a grant and half on a loan to be repaid when graduates enter a profession. The scheme for specially gifted students is purely grants-based.

"BAFöG covering needs and an achievements-based grant are the core elements of modern student finance," Schavan explained.

The federal government also hopes that raising the age limit for BAFöG eligibility from 30 to 35 years, to accommodate students doing a master's degree after a professional phase with their bachelor's degree, will increase the number of students benefiting from federal support by 50,000 to 60,000.

The latest official BAFöG statistics, relating to 2008 and based on a student population of 1.919 million, put the number of BAFöG students at 333,000. Now there are just over two million students in Germany.

The federal government's new schemes have met with little overall enthusiasm. While the opposition Social Democrats and Greens abstained from the vote in parliament Margret Wintermantel, President of the Rectors' Conference representing the heads of German universities, said that the new grants concept would have to be "thoroughly revised" and "can't work in its present form".

The Social Democrats criticise that the BAFöG increase - on average by EUR13 (US$16) a month, with the present maximum level of support at EUR 630 a month - is insufficient. The Greens claim that the grants scheme is "unbalanced" and "sets the wrong priorities", while the left-wing party Die Linke calls the BAFöG increase "a drop in the ocean".

The new grants system would provide eligible students with EUR300 a month, financed half by industry or other sponsors and half by the federal and state governments. It would aim to benefit around 160,000 students.

The new measures are planned to be in place by the autumn. However, the state governments are wary, given what they will have to pay for them. At this month's Education Summit in Berlin Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel had already rejected their proposal to postpone the new grants for the time being and concentrate on the BAFöG reform, and turned down suggestions that they could be provided with extra funding via a redistribution of VAT revenue.

However, Merkel's Christian Democrats and their junior partners, the Free Democrats, no longer hold the majority of state governments, so it seems unlikely the new measures will be given Upper House approval in their present form.

michael.gardner@uw-news.com