Those were the days in 1971: students wore bell bottoms and perms, and camped at the first open-air festivals.

And they didn't have to pay back their student loans.

The study grant was still a full grant.

This new student loan should ensure justice and open up "educational reserves" - so it was said.

It worked: Almost every second student at the time received benefits under the Federal Training Assistance Act.

Lena can only dream of such times: Because the now 33-year-old wanted to study special education in Cologne ten years ago and her mother did not earn enough to finance her, she applied for student loans. Lena no longer wants to be addressed about this time, which is why she is not quoted by her full name. She did not know her birth father. The Bafög office did not want to accept that: without his signature, the authority refused to pay her. For nine months, Lena kept crying in office. In the end, the authorities transferred the student loan rate to which she had long been entitled. “I almost gave up my dream of studying,” says Lena. "I had to get completely naked for the application."

Fewer and fewer students are benefiting from student grants today, exactly 50 years after their introduction: In 1971 almost 45 percent of all students received Bafög, it is now eleven percent.

Last year, around 160 million euros from the student loan budget were not paid out to students.

This is calling more and more critics to the scene: trade unions, student representatives, but also party politicians from the Greens and FDP are demanding longer approval periods, higher parental allowances and the possibility of digitally applying for student loans.

But above all, they want students to receive more money.

Too poor to study, too rich for student loans

There are many ideas how this can be achieved: The FDP would like a fundamental reform towards a model that is completely independent of the parents' income. Then every student would be eligible for student loans. In addition, the Free Democrats want to provide all students up to the age of 25 with a refund-free amount of 200 euros. The Greens, on the other hand, propose a two-part model - according to which there would be a grant for all students and a bonus for those from low-income families. According to the wishes of the politicians, the Bafög remains predominantly a loan.

The proposed reforms are intended to counteract a downward trend: “Today, children from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds have significantly worse opportunities to study,” says Andreas Keller, deputy chairman of the Education and Science Union (GEW). Current figures support his thesis: While in the 1970s around 80 percent of all high school students from non-academic families aspired to study, 30 years later it was only 50 percent. Today, only every fifth child from a working-class family dares to go to university - that's what the current university report says.

Who is entitled to Bafög and to what extent depends primarily on how much your parents earn. Because mothers and fathers in Germany are fundamentally obliged to provide maintenance. But with the current income limits in student loans, families from the lower middle class are already considered wealthy enough to support their children without government help. “The Bafög no longer reaches the lower and middle income brackets,” says Carlotta Kühnemann. The economic sociology student is involved in the Free Association of Student Unions (fzs), an umbrella organization of student representatives in Germany.

The student and unionist Keller criticize the fact that the Bafög office deducts the so-called parental allowance from the monthly net income of the parents. What is left is halved and deducted from the maximum student loan rate, which is currently 861 euros - this results in the student loan entitlement. Married parents, for example, currently receive an allowance of 2000 euros per month. Students whose parents together have a gross income of around EUR 30,000 per year can no longer count on the maximum student loan rate.