In Koblenz, the heating stays off and the students are locked out.

What is now happening in the student city on the Rhine is what representatives from politics and universities first announced in the summer of this year and rejected again after heavy criticism: an energy lockdown.

From December 4th to January 8th, the Koblenz University of Applied Sciences will send its students to the online lecture.

In doing so, she wants to save the 15 percent energy that universities at state level are supposed to use less this year.

Other universities are also considering how they can save energy.

The University of Mainz, for example, has shortened the opening hours of the library and the University of Saarland is giving its students a few more days of winter break.

A bit of online teaching, saving energy and more holidays, that doesn't sound so bad, you might think.

But what happened there is a scandal.

The lightbulbs are on everywhere and at some universities the lights are now going out.

Once again, the nation is taking its helplessness out on the students.

And they don't fight back, they just stay at home.

It's not even snuggly warm there.

All of this is strongly reminiscent of the corona pandemic, when public life had long since started up again, but the students didn't benefit from it.

People crowded into shopping malls, pubs and open-plan offices, but students still had to do their Zoom lectures at home.

It wasn't until this spring that the universities started normal operations - and it's already in danger again.

Degradation of education raises puzzles

After two and a half years of the pandemic, it is well known how inadequate online teaching is.

The university in its current form cannot simply be converted to digital, everyone agrees.

There are even special courses at the universities today to compensate for the learning deficits of the students from the pandemic.

Why are you making the same mistake again?

You can cite reasons ranging from Corona to Putin, but I can't help but get the impression that education is degenerating into an object of negotiation.

The development isn't new, it's just getting worse and worse.

As with the shut down gas pipelines, the energy crisis also shows in education where the journey leads if you close your eyes for decades: to fri-fra-frost country.

In 1999 the Bologna reforms began, which made the German degree programs internationally comparable, but at the same time subjected them to neoliberal market logic.

Since then, the idea has been spreading that education should serve the economy.

Its aim is to make graduates with the perfect fit available to the labor market as quickly as possible.

In this logic, the focus is no longer on people in their striving for education, but on their economic usability.

The development did not stop at the students either, when almost all federal states introduced G8 in the mid-2000s.

So the Abitur in eight years instead of nine, as was the norm before.

After all, many countries have backtracked and are now allowing their students to do their Abitur for nine years again.

Because the finding of the experiment was not that surprising: one year more school does no harm.

Suddenly in the home office compulsory university

But that doesn't change the fact that one thing has stuck in many people's minds: You can tweak and save on education, it's not that important.

The young people could be happy that they are offered so much in this republic.

This is a logic that sounds more like 19th-century industrial drudgery than a 21st-century knowledge society.

The degradation of education raises a mystery: we live in a country that has hardly any natural resources, but has always looked to the bright minds who shaped the world.

This is our strength.

Whether the next big idea will come from university graduates who could hardly study because they sat in their booth for years is an open question.

At least some people seem to understand that.

Fortunately, my university in Mannheim is not planning an energy lockdown.

"The Rectorate is committed to maintaining face-to-face teaching," said the University of Mannheim on request.

The university cites the experiences from the pandemic as the reason.

Mental illnesses have increased significantly among students.

"Personal exchange is essential for successful studies," says their spokeswoman.

So the university is doing everything it can for its students, and rightly so!

Incidentally, the University of Mannheim cannot be accused of having a comparatively comfortable starting position.

The university is located in Europe's second largest baroque palace, where there is a lot to be heated and illuminated.

By the way, I don't get the idea of ​​an energy lockdown.

When the students are not at the university, they sit at home.

In the end, it makes no difference whether the light is on here or there.

And when it comes to heating, you act as if students were sissies, neglected by their wealth, who only want to think in the warmth.

What a mistake: it thinks well even in the cold.

My friend Manhal is studying at the Koblenz University of Applied Sciences.

In his compulsory home office university, he is preparing for cold weeks.

He has little money but a gas heater.

So stay away.

"I use a thick blanket instead," he says.

He doesn't want to complain that you just have to save energy.

I wonder: Why all the lockdown talk?

What works at home also works at university.

Heat off and blankets out!

Leon Igel

(26 years old) is studying German and Business Administration at the University of Mannheim for a master's degree. He is less concerned with Goethe and more with Christoph Schlingensief.

When that gets too much for him, he drives to his parents' house and chop wood.

Or bake bread.

Thanks to Corona, he can now too.