Meagre compensation means triple bad luck for loan students

The leaders of the new coalition were so proud to announce the return of the basic student grant. Every student will again have an equal chance, and in the student loan system students will be compensated. They are allocating €1 billion for this! But a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that that’s less than €950 discount on your student loan, which amounts to an overwhelming €19 per month; the same as receiving a free crate of beer a month.

You could say that this is a considerable amount in compensation, especially with all the other public sector problems that also cost money. But this is more about equal opportunities between generations.

With the old basic student grant, students received €285 per month. After inflation, this means that current students should get around €14,707.20 for four years’ nominal studying. A huge difference. The very first unlucky student loan students even missed out on both the halving of tuition fees for new students and the coronavirus allowance.

Despite the abolition of the student grant, there was hardly any investment in educational quality in all these years: the loan generation certainly hasn’t benefited from this, in any event. The few investments that have been made have mainly been used to make up for deficits and to finance increasing numbers of national and international students.

But what effect does student debt have on this generation of unfortunate students? In the short term, we’ve experienced above-average mental stress. In the medium term, higher student debt continues to haunt us, when we apply for a mortgage, for example.

I can already hear the last generation of conscripts from 1996 and the students without student grants from 1985 banging on the door of my student room, telling me that everyone has bad luck sometimes because of a new government law. And, of course, they’re entirely correct. But in addition to the setbacks of the pandemic, our unfortunate generation will soon be competing with the generations both above and below us. After all, these generations will have more study time to develop as well as being in a stronger financial position on the housing market.

As loan students it’s a good idea not to look at the DUO site, as you’ll suffer from anxiety after seeing that amount hiding behind the login wall. It’s almost as though the new coalition is also afraid to face the real harm done to this unlucky generation. We’ve always been told that you should view your study as ‘an investment in the future’. I think the coalition should consider loan students in the same way, by offering us better compensation.