Study account
Student accounts are a special form of tuition fees . The basic concept of the study accounts is the idea that free studies should be available to everyone capable of studying, but that the state or the community can only make limited resources available for education. The study accounts are intended to allocate sufficient educational resources to each and every student. Those who use more resources than budgeted have to finance them themselves.
background
Study accounts are a special form of education vouchers that have long been discussed in education economics. Milton Friedman mentioned education vouchers in an article back in 1955 . For example, the FDP demanded education vouchers for kindergartens in the 2002 federal election program. With the change in the Social Security Code III through Hartz legislation , education vouchers are used in further training for the unemployed.
Implementation of the study accounts
The study accounts were developed by the SPD under the leadership of the Rhineland-Palatinate Education Minister Jürgen Zöllner and introduced in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate , but abolished in North Rhine-Westphalia due to the introduction of general tuition fees in the 2007 summer semester. In Rhineland-Palatinate, the study accounts were abolished for the summer semester 2012, as separate long-term study fees are no longer charged.
Basic idea of the study accounts: The degree of use of the university influences the debiting of the study account. If you attend a lot of events, your student account is more heavily charged than that of someone who is only a part-time student. In Rhineland-Palatinate, the so-called 'service debiting' has been introduced for first-year students in bachelor's and master's degrees, in which the debiting is based on the individual course of study. For the remaining diploma and master’s courses, in order to avoid high administrative costs, there is still a 'regular debit', which is debited in the same amount per semester. The advantage of the study account model is that the first degree remains free of charge and, in the case of a swift first degree, the remaining credit can be used for further training or postgraduate studies.
criticism
Student accounts are particularly criticized by students, represented for example by the campaign alliance against tuition fees. The criticism essentially covers the same points that are made against tuition fees and against education vouchers in general.
In addition, the current implementation is particularly criticized for the fact that the regular debiting turns the student accounts into long-term tuition fees that are customary in other federal states . This would put a strain on the financially weak students in particular, as they often have to work on the side to finance their living, which in turn extends their studies. These, of all people, would now have to pay fees, while wealthier students were spared additional costs.
Another point of criticism, which applies particularly to the current implementation, indicates that even a student who takes longer to study does not need more resources from the university. Whether you take the prescribed lectures and exams in nine, fifteen or twenty semesters does not change the amount, but only the temporal distribution of resources, according to the critics.
Web links
- Information on the mechanisms of student accounts and the associated demand-oriented student funding. Text by Klemens Himpele from 2003 (PDF)
- Study accounts in Rhineland-Palatinate
- Overview of the criticism of education vouchers and student accounts (PDF)
- Abolition of long-term tuition fees in RLP
