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Studying under corona conditions
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The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is said to have delayed the Corona bridging aid for students.
This reports »Zeit Online«.
According to the editorial team, there are more than 1,000 pages of e-mail traffic between the ministry and the Deutsches Studentenwerk (DSW), which can be used to trace the struggle for financial aid for students in need.
Or rather the pathetic attempt to find a solution.
Two computer science students from the TU Darmstadt, who are involved in the student association fzs, had requested access to the documents via the Fragdenstaat.de platform on the basis of the Freedom of Information Act (IFG).
The IFG gives citizens access to information from federal authorities, even if they are not affected themselves.
Both students told »Zeit Online« that they had not applied for or received any Corona emergency aid from the BMBF themselves.
The correspondence suggests that the ministry, under the leadership of the CDU politician Anja Karliczek at the time, apparently had little interest in helping the students “quickly and unbureaucratically” during the pandemic, as the head of the house had publicly announced.
The BMBF is said to have worried primarily about misuse of the aid
The DSW is said to have initially proposed a subsidy for students in financial need, as the report says: Anyone who has lost their part-time job due to Corona only needs to submit a certificate of enrollment, the last three payslips and proof that the employment relationship no longer exists.
It was just as easy for self-employed people to apply for support in spring 2020.
Above all, Karliczek's ministry is said to have worried that students could abuse the aid.
Therefore, the student union should have developed a loan model instead of the subsidy, which was later rejected as too cumbersome.
Because in addition to the ministry, the student unions and the umbrella organization, a bank and the financial supervisory authority BaFin would have had to be involved.
more on the subject
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Finally, they agreed on a subsidy, but several months had passed and the financial burden had become an existential threat for many students.
The model: If you have less than 500 euros in your account, you should get 100 euros from the state.
If students owned less than 100 euros, they should receive 500 euros.
In the first month, almost half of all applications were rejected
In mid-June, more than four months after the start of the pandemic, an online portal went online.
Students should be able to apply for emergency aid.
Previously, writes "Zeit Online", the BMBF and DSW had argued about liability issues.
Who is responsible for it when someone gets money to whom it is not actually due?
In the first month, almost half of all applications for bridging assistance were rejected - allegedly because the students could not prove their distress, as the DSW explained.
Students vented their displeasure on Twitter and other social media.
After examining the documents, »Zeit Online« comes to a different conclusion: there were no filling-in aids that should serve as a guideline for the clerks on site as to which applications should be decided on and how.
»But since these were missing, the clerks in the student unions probably decided in case of doubt at the expense of the students.«
SPIEGEL has asked the BMBF for a statement on the allegations made in the article.
The ministry left the request unanswered.
olb
