In 1957, German students threatened a strike for the first time. It was about the implementation of the so-called Honnef model of state student funding. The magazine Der Spiegel asked Heinrich Wittneben, the chairman of the Association of German Student Unions (VDS), why the state should specifically support the training of future academics. The promotion of the next generation of academics is certainly in the public interest, but why should one finance a foreseeable “academic glut” in well-paid fashion professions like “law”? Wouldn't it make more sense to train scientists and engineers instead of “mediocre offspring of the classic disciplines”?
Wittneben defended the Honnef model, which, in its combination of proven ability and need, was based on the funding principles of the German National Academic Foundation.
That would only support about every second student.
With such a “generous assessment of the neediness and intelligence” of the German students, Der Spiegel sneered, one would come into “fatal proximity to the people's student”.
No, protested Wittneben, it was rather the SPD that wanted to “breed state students” by striving for full support for seventy percent of all students in the long term.
Does the SPD really want that? Asked Der Spiegel, confused?
Only a few students submit an application
She wanted. The Honnef model, which was finally implemented, only reached around fifteen percent of students at the end of the 1960s. In 1971, at the insistence of the SPD, it was replaced by student loans, which initially actually funded almost half of all students. In the fifty years of its existence, the law has been changed repeatedly. The initial full scholarship became a full loan in the 1980s, now it's a mix of both. Today only around twelve percent of students receive student loans, while at the same time the number of students is still increasing year after year. So while the “people's student” has long since become a reality, the student loans are getting less and less of them. Should it be abolished and training subsidies completely reorganized?
For years, the ratio of those who are basically entitled to Bafög and the number of students has been relatively constant: around two thirds would have a legal entitlement. But sixty to seventy percent of those entitled do not even apply. This leads to the absurd situation that the BMBF spent 1.9 billion euros on student loans in 2019, but returned almost one billion in unused student loans. The opposition says, no wonder, the student loan is now so low that even those who received it no longer apply for it. Before the outbreak of the pandemic, the ministry referred to the good economy and said that neediness had fallen significantly because both parents and students had increased income. Do the students no longer need the student loan?