Assignment 4.

Freezing student grants

The new government budget, which was made known on the 15th September, revealed the plans of the government to freeze student grants for two years starting from 2011. This involves that student grants will not be adapted to the yearly inflation in this period.

Until now, the grants of students yearly increased with approximately €10 to cover the increasing costs of living and education. Due to the financial crisis and the lowering public treasury, savings need to be made on government’s spending. Freezing the student grants is a clear example which will save up to €18 million.

 

Consequences

As mentioned before, freezing student grants will make it harder for students to cover their living and educational expenses. Consequently, and especially for the poorer students, this might cause financial problems and make it impossible for them to continue or start a study.

In addition to the student grants also other measures were taken in the past few years to save government expenditure. For example, the government decided to increase the tuition fee with €200 and to abolish the entitled tuition fee for people with a second study. All of these measures put pressure on the accessibility of studies in the higher education.

 

Personal view

Personally, I do understand that savings need to be made on government expenditure as the costs for the Dutch treasury are increasing. Think for example to citizens who got unemployed during the crisis and need financial compensation, and the lowering tax income of the state as industries make less profit. Nevertheless, I do think it is important to invest in the future and students are part of this. The more students are able to enjoy a proper education the more chances this will create for the Netherlands to get back on track and to grow in the future. The students of today are the representatives of the future and for this reason I wonder whether it is smart freeze student grants.

 

Other possibilities

The Dutch student organisation LSVb (Landelijke Studentenvakbond) came up with some alternatives with the hope that also students will get motivated to come up with solutions. An example is the ‘study tax’. This alternative involves giving students proper grants to cover the costs of living and education and let them pay for it via extra taxes if they start to work.

Secondly, the government should conduct more supervision on the parents of students. Parents with studying children are legally obliged to support their children financially to let them study. Currently, it is not made sure that this also happens. The government provides student grants but expects parents to contribute to the costs of their children’s’ study as well. Better supervision should ensure that parents really contribute.