The loan system will soon be a thing of the past: from the academic year 2023-2024 all students will have access to a basic grant. The binding study advice is also going to become less strict, as proclaimed in the new coalition agreement. However, students are left with a lot of questions. ‘Great that they are thinking about us, but what it actually says is rather disappointing.’

After over 270 days since the elections, the coalition parties VVD, D66, CDA and ChristenUnie presented their new coalition accord to the House of Representatives. ‘Looking out for each other and looking towards the future,’ is the title of the fifty-page document.

The coalition wants to make some changes to the higher education system. Most importantly: the loan system will soon be a thing of the past. From the academic year 2023-2023, a basic and an income-dependent grant will be available to all students. Furthermore, the accord states that the OV-chipkaart (card for Dutch public transport), the current loan terms and related investments will remain untouched.

Last week, student unions including AKKU were still demonstrating against the loan system. AKKU-president Kayleigh Hofstede, even though she read the coalition accord, still feels disappointed. ‘Great that they are thinking about us, but what the accord actually says is rather disappointing. We are happy with the return of the basic grant, but we have no clue what the amount will be and on top of that we need to wait until 2023 for it to arrive. So, for the next one-and-a-half years we are still stuck in a system we have been calling worthless for the last five years.’

Compensation

Students who could not make use of the basic grant will be compensated. They will, according to the coalition accord, be able to choose between a discount on the study loan debt and a study voucher, for which 1 billion euros has been made available. How this money will be divided amongst students remains unclear for now.

Seray van Montfort of student party asap is happy with the intentions but has questions about the amount of money made available: ‘A quick calculation based on 800.000 students amounts to 1250 euros of compensation per person. Together with the current voucher arrangement, that’s a maximum of 3250 euros. That seems disproportionate to me. Also, exactly how the vouchers are going to work is still unclear.’

AKKU-president Hofstede agrees. ‘A billion sounds like a lot of money. But the total student loan debt is currently around 24 billion and increases every second. What good is a study voucher if you’ve already graduated and are stuck with a debt of 40.000 euros?’

The last few months, student unions demanded the government to make graduating debt-free an option. They pointed out that the government also has other tools available, such as the minimum wage. The latter is now going to increase step-by-step by 7,5 percent. ‘Unbelievable,’ finds Hofstede. ‘Students who work themselves to death to keep their debt low have no use for this.’

Binding study advice

The coalition accord also states that the binding study advice (BSA) will be adjusted. Those that don’t achieve their BSA in the first year, will get another chance in their second year. The purpose of this change is to improve student well-being. Educational institutions will keep the possibility to guide students to a better fitting study programme at the end of the first year if there is ‘evidence of insufficient study progress’.

Van Montfort (asap) is positive about the new BSA-arrangement. ‘It’s a nice middle ground between the wishes of student organisations that wanted it gone and educational institutions who, of course, still want to be able to refer students to better fitting studies.’

The AKKU-president is also happy about the BSA becoming less strict. ‘The coalition parties do show that they are aware of what problems are in play. But they still seem to not realise how and how quickly these problems need to be tackled.’

Now that the coalition accord is made public, the search for a new Minister of Education can begin. The person to succeed Ingrid van Engelshoven (D66, current Minister of Education) will presumably be announced in the coming days.