Good news is also news. Last week, the cabinet submitted a bill in that students will again receive a basic grant from next academic year and that the supplementary grant will be made available to many more students than now, or ever before. From now on, children whose parents together earn up to 70,000 euros per year will be able to receive a financial supplement to the basic grant.
That concerns a large group of people – because by far the majority of families live from one and a half to two times ‘average’, or 57,000 to 76,000 euros gross per year. The grant is valid for MBO, HBO and university students and for a maximum of four or five years per student.
The financial position of your parents should not be a reason not to study in the Netherlands if you can and want to. But it seemed to become more and more.
Students had to borrow money to study for the past seven years – a meaningful investment in yourself was the reasoning – and only if their parents earned a maximum of 55,000 euros, they also received an additional loan, which was converted into a gift if the student within ten years had graduated. The richer your parents, the less you had to borrow.
The consequences are well known: 1.6 million students and graduates had a student debt at the beginning of this year – half of them have a debt of more than 10,000 euros. They may pay off that debt in thirty years, but for a long time it was also considered by banks as a reason not to provide them with a mortgage, or a very low one. Besides the latter, students felt a lot of pressure to graduate quickly (time is money) and also had to work extra jobs to make ends meet each month. They didn’t do that excessively, by the way Central Planning Bureau in 2020; they simply borrowed a lot of money – often more than the former basic grant.
What the cabinet is now proposing is a basic grant of 275 euros per month for students living away from home and 110 euros for those living at home. Due to the housing shortage, 60 percent of students live with their parents, so that makes a difference.
The supplementary grant, for students whose parents earn more than one and a half average, will amount to another (at most) 416 euros per month if the student lives in a room. And then everyone who lives independently will also receive 165 euros per month for a year as compensation for the high energy bill.
Many students will still have to borrow something and ask their parents for a contribution, but this really makes a difference. The new stock exchange means less borrowing, less stress about the future and fewer hours of work in a cafe to make ends meet.
Student organizations had only one critical note: the students who had the misfortune to study in the past seven years receive little compensation for the large debt they built up. At most 1,400 euros per graduate. You simply cannot compensate everyone for previously pursued policy, says Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf (Education, D66), and that may well be the case. The student debt of all students and former students amounted to 24.4 billion euros at the beginning of this year.
Every student in the Netherlands who is willing and able to study should be able to do so. This is not only a basic right for themselves, but also important for society as a whole. Society desperately needs graduates of MBO, HBO and academics for the future.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of November 4, 2022