Cabinet may expand supplementary grant for young people from middle incomes, but within budget | Politics

Instead, students with parents who earn a middle income (up to 70,000 or 80,000 euros per year) could also claim a supplementary grant. This grant will then be added to the basic grant, which will make a comeback per academic year 2023-2024. In the plans of Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf, students living at home still receive 91 euros per month, students living away from home 255 euros.

The House, especially coalition parties D66 and CDA, want Dijkgraaf to do more for the middle incomes, because research shows that this group is most in trouble. D66 MP Jeanet van der Laan says it is good that lower incomes benefit the most in the cabinet’s preferred variant. “But can it be made even more social by making middle-class students eligible for a supplementary grant?”

According to Dijkgraaf, this is ‘certainly another knob that can be turned’. “We can do more for middle incomes if we simultaneously reduce the maximum supplementary grant,” said Dijkgraaf in a parliamentary debate about the basic grant.

The opposition, like student organizations, thinks the amounts are ‘too cheap’ and wants students to receive a higher grant. But the D66 minister does not intend to allocate more money for a possible adjustment of the plans that he shared with the House of Representatives two weeks ago. “I can spread the total budget for the supplementary grant further.”

According to Dijkgraaf, the combination of basic grant and supplementary grant is ‘very close to the old system’ as it applied until 2015. “But we also have to be honest: there is also a role for parents and for borrowing. That has always been the case.” CDA MP Harry van der Molen, who stated that his party ‘would have wanted to go further financially’ than the coalition agreement ‘gives us the opportunity’, agreed. “The basic grant has never been a system that you could get by completely.”

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The minister stated several times that he is bound by the amount that was agreed during the negotiations of the Rutte IV cabinet. “This is the order I have to carry out.”

This also applies to the allowance that students receive who have no longer received a basic grant since 2015 and who had to borrow their student finance. An amount of 1 billion euros has been set aside for this, but the House did not receive an answer to the question on what that amount is based on. Dijkgraaf acknowledged that it is far from being full compensation. “I can also count, I see that this is a contribution to the compensation.” According to Dijkgraaf, it is his ‘assignment’ to spend that amount ‘as effectively as possible’.

Students will receive their allowance ‘at the earliest’ in 2025, because according to Dijkgraaf this is ‘a considerable technical job’ for the Education Executive Agency (DUO). Earlier is not possible. Also, young people only hear in that year how much money they will receive. The compensation will be a maximum of 3206 euros, provided that students also have the study vouchers paid out.

Part of the House fears that young people will skip en masse next academic year, so that they will be covered by the basic grant a year later. That could save them ‘thousands of euros’ in debt, SP member Peter Kwint calculated. Dijkgraaf promises to follow the developments ‘with care’. He emphasizes that students who start their study program in September will receive the basic grant from 2023. He also encourages young people not to postpone their studies. “The sooner you can start your future, the better.”

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