Bridging aid scheme for students facing hardship ‘revamped’

With COVID-19 case numbers rising significantly in Germany over the last few weeks, the government has relaunched its support programme for students facing financial hardship owing to the coronavirus pandemic.

Bridging aid was provided from June to September for students struggling with financial difficulties because of the coronavirus pandemic. Support was offered in a two-component grant and loan scheme.

“We’re not going to let the students down in the pandemic,” said Education Minister Anja Karliczek, announcing the new measures in Berlin.

“We will again be offering students facing an emergency owing to the pandemic the grants as part of the bridging aid programme we ran in the summer.

“The aim is to help students whose source of income from gainful employment or through parental support has temporarily been suspended as a result of measures adopted to curb the pandemic.”

Karliczek maintained that the bridging aid made available during the summer had been suspended for the time being because significantly fewer applications providing proof of an emergency situation had been submitted than were originally anticipated.

The scheme had been revamped and procedures had been simplified so that “everyone, including first-year students, can now produce proof of their pandemic-conditioned hardship without unnecessary red tape”.

Support throughout winter

Support is to last throughout the winter semester. Grants amount to a maximum of €500 (US$595) a month, depending on need, and are approved on a monthly basis. Deutsches Studentenwerk (the German National Association for Student Affairs) is responsible for processing applications, which have to be submitted online.

Karliczek further explained that the second tier of bridging aid for students running into pandemic-conditioned financial hardship, loans of up to €650 via the state-run KfW bank, had also been modified, with the loans now being offered interest-free throughout 2021.

The KfW loans, which were originally introduced for students in 2006, have to be repaid entirely and are normally only interest-free if students repay them within a year.

Resorting to the KfW loans as a support measure in the coronavirus crisis was heavily criticised by the freier zusammenschluss von student*innenschaften (FZS), an association of German student unions, when the scheme was first introduced in the summer.

“The education minister is offering emergency support in the form of a loan. This means that she is asking students to either give up studying or become over-indebted,” said FZS official Amanda Steinmaus at the time.

“The KfW loan is a debt trap for international students. The extension of the interest-free period by a couple of months doesn’t change this at all,” said Kambiz Ghawami, chairman of World University Service (WUS) Germany.

“WUS therefore urgently warns international students not to take out a KfW student loan.”

Ghawami stresses that the situation for international students from Africa, Asia and Latin America has further worsened over the last few months because of the impact the pandemic has had on their home countries.

“The two changes to the application procedure announced by the minister – that pandemic-related hardship can be proven via unsuccessful applications for jobs rather than only by producing evidence of dismissal and that only the account statements of the previous month and up to the date of submitting the application have to be provided – by no means relieve the student service associations and the students themselves of unnecessary testing procedures,” Ghawami notes regarding the modifications to the grant scheme.

And he calls the maximum level of €500 unrealistic, and urges the government to raise it to the maximum €861 of ‘BAFöG’ (Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz or federal student finance act) support.

“Karliczek simply refuses to see the reality that so many students are currently facing,” Ghawami comments.

Michael Gardner E-mail: michael.gardner@uw-news.com