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Application for training funding: The Left expects “little to no impact on the number of Bafög recipients”
Photo: Marijan Murat/dpa
“We want to reform Bafög and make it more independent of parents,” the traffic light coalition announced in the 2021 coalition agreement. Essentially, two things should change: those entitled to Bafög should receive more money - and there should also be more people entitled to BaföG overall. However, the Ministry of Education cannot provide any information about the extent to which it will achieve the latter. This emerges from the answer to a written question from Bundestag member Nicole Gohlke, Left, which SPIEGEL has received.
“In view of the large number of impact mechanisms,” “no valid estimates can currently be made regarding the group of eligible people and the number of Bafög recipients,” said the FDP-led ministry. However, it is fundamentally assumed that the planned changes “will lead to an expansion of those eligible and supported.”
“Unprofessional and an impertinence towards the students”
Not knowing how many additional students the proposed reform will reach is "unprofessional and an impudence towards the students," Gohlke told SPIEGEL. She assumes "that the Ministry of Education is afraid of publicly admitting again that this reform will have little to no impact on the number of Bafög recipients."
The University Rectors' Conference and the German Student Union had previously announced that the planned changes contained some positive aspects, but failed to provide a fundamental structural reform. The student support rate was recently around twelve percent; the previous reforms had only expected an increase of 1.8 percent, the student union said in a statement on the draft law.
The draft presented provides for various mechanisms that could increase the proportion of those entitled: The parental allowances - as in the previous reform - are to be increased further, and there is also to be a so-called flexibility semester in the future. This means that students can receive BaföG beyond the maximum funding period, without giving reasons. Changing disciplines during funding should also become easier in the future.
The coalition's first promise to significantly increase the Bafög rates has already been withdrawn. The last Bafög increase had already been overtaken by the rising cost of living when it came into force; a further increase is not planned, according to the current draft bill for the further Bafög reform. It is scheduled to come into force in the winter semester of 2024/25.
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