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The Government is going to change the system for awarding university scholarships to eliminate the academic criteria for accessing these grants. The scholarship will only depend on income and will not be subject to the merit and effort of the student. The requirement to enjoy the full amount in the first year of the degree will be lowered from 6.5 to 5.

Until now, 5 was the grade required to enjoy free tuition, but not the full scholarship. It was the minister José Ignacio Wert who in 2013 raised to 6.5 the mark requested in the first course to be able to access the aid and to 5.5 to enjoy free enrollment. It also established a system by which each scholarship had a fixed part and a variable part so that the student received more money if his income was lower and his grades were better from a convoluted formula that, in practice, did not translate into a Greater reward for the most applied students from the most disadvantaged environments.

The measure provoked a lot of social protest although, in practice, it increased the academic performance of the students. In 2018, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo reduced the grade required to enjoy university enrollment the first year from 5.5 to 5, but left the requirement to receive a financial amount at 6.5.

Minister Manuel Castells now leaves it at 5 to "democratize the right to higher education and increase the number of students who enter universities." It calculates that the change will suppose that there are 54,853 more students who enjoy these grants.

In a reform that has been carried out between the Ministry of Universities and the Ministry of Education, the aid budget has been increased by 22% to raise by 100 euros the amounts per scholarship for undergraduate and master students, as well as to raise the threshold 1 of beneficiaries until equating it to the threshold of the person, which will imply that there are 70,000 more beneficiaries.

However, the variable part of the scholarship that Wert imposed has not been removed, despite the fact that both the PSOE and Unidas Podemos denounced the arbitrariness that it caused when they were in the opposition and that they promised to eliminate it. The scholarships are first distributed in their fixed part and then, with the remaining money, their variable part is distributed. "The academic requirements of the fixed part have been removed, but not those of the variable part," they denounce at the State Confederation of Student Associations (Canae).

Nor has the Government responded to the students' claim so that, in this exceptional situation due to the coronavirus, family income is taken into account not in relation to the previous two years, as is the case now, but also to deal with the economic circumstances that have arisen by the Covid-19.

In a resolution that is being debated this Thursday in the State School Council, proposed by Canae, it is requested "to temporarily adjust the income requirements allowing to prove unexpected changes in family socioeconomic circumstances."

Sources from the Ministry of Universities say that "it is legally impossible to meet the incomes of the current year due to their partial registration" and that "the budget increase will allow most of the families affected by the Covid crisis to be served- 19 who are applying for scholarships and study grants. "

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