Text: HOP
Translation Marijn Hondorp
Freezing students' grants?
15-09-2009 @ 16:29:44 by Renee Jenniskens
The amount of the basic grant has increased more quickly in the past years than the tuition fees. If the cabinet actually freezes the students' grants, studying won’t be more expensive than in 2005.
Numbers of the Information Management Group
Students living away from home had more money left the last past years. The ones living with their parents had to contribute less money. Consideration shows out of numbers from the Information Management Group.
In 2002, students had to pay 1395 euros tuition fee. A student living away from home received a basic grant of 211 euros a month, whereas a student living at home received 69 euros. Counting for one year, the tuition fees took up 55.1 per cent of the basic grant for students living in lodgings. The ones staying at home got almost 60 per cent of the tuition fees compensated. That proportion became better and better. Last year, students living away from home lost only 51.2 per cent of their basic grant to tuition fees. Students living at home have been getting seventy per cent of their tuition fees compensated since a few years already: 70.1 percent in 2009.
Students better off in future
Imagine that the tuition fees will increase with two per cent a year for the next two years, inclusively the yearly 22 euros tuition fee rise to pay the increasing teachers’ salaries. The proportions will end up in 2011 at the level of 2005.
Even in that time students living away from home lost 53.5 per cent of their grant to tuition fees. Students living at home would even be better off than in that time: they had to pay 588 euros in those days, whereas that will become 542 euros in 2011, according to estimations.
Student's grant: not only basic grant
Students have more costs than just the tuition fees of course. But after deduction of the tuition fees, the basic grant increased more quickly for students living away from home than the inflation. Only last year was an exception. For students living at home the adaptations deviated: Sometimes they received more, sometimes they received less than the inflation. At the moment, the inflation is almost 0.0 per cent.
For the rest, the students’ grants don’t only consist of the basic grant, but also of the supplementary grant, loan and public transport student’s pass. These were left out of consideration here.
