“The universal student allowance proposed by the Unef would be an anti-social aid”

Lyvann Vaté is a student at INALCO, HESS and ENS.

He is preparing a doctoral thesis which will focus on the notion of merit in contemporary moral and political thought.

He recently published

Norbert Elias and bourgeois Marxism

Peremptory, noisy and hackneyed, the demand for a “universal” autonomy allowance is a ritual of certain student unions at each start of the academic year and at each major student social movement.

The Unef, through the voice of its president Imane Ouehladj, was no exception to this last week.

However, this claim obstructs the reflection on the solutions to be brought to student precariousness.

No one among those who take a close interest in the French education system can deny the extent of student poverty.

No one in good faith can ignore that times of economic crisis affect the least financially stable groups the hardest, starting with students who, unless they rely on family help, do not yet receive a stable income.

No one can underestimate the increase in precariousness affecting students, in a country where, for example, more than half of the beneficiaries of Restos du Coeur are under 25 years old - including a considerable proportion of minors - and where one in three young people has already given up on care.

The new head of Unef, Imane Ouehladj, who succeeded Mélanie Luce without breaking the line on the subject, has therefore just opposed the same proposal in the form of a slogan: the “universal” autonomy allowance, understood as aid granted "on simple request" and without taking into account the family's income.

This idea of ​​universality of aid for students does not only evacuate the relevance of aid based on academic merit, which would benefit the best among the most disadvantaged, by recognizing the value of work and individual effort while making excellence the horizon of any vocational training or further studies.

Universality also prohibits any discussion on the social criteria for allocating aid: if this student allowance were universal, it would benefit everyone, therefore including students who do not need it – while having a cost, rarely estimated moreover, not negligible for the State.

False generosity and fraudulent solidarity than those which,

Universality denies the specific value of the work accomplished by the student who, coming from a modest background, has been able to rise to the highest level.

Lyvann Vate

The same income?

Moreover, this is not so certain: we clearly feel the difficulty posed by this universality... of which Mélanie Luce had written, last year, that it should be "

and the amount of which could then be considered to vary according to particular situations.

However, the measure seems to have evolved and now takes the form of a minimum student income equivalent to the poverty line: which amounts to transferring almost 1,100 euros every month to the students' account, without even taking into account the tax income. of reference in the household, and therefore without ensuring that the aid only benefits the most modest.

Since the very meaning of universality implies paying aid to everyone, since its promoters claim its unconditionality, there is no guarantee that this allowance will not be paid, for example, to students from wealthy families who have the means to provide for their children's needs during their studies.

The refusal to distinguish on social criteria abolishes the very social dimension of aid.

In the eyes of those who would like an ever more redistributive social policy, universality should appear as an obvious obstacle to taking particular situations into account, and therefore to the effectiveness of any supposedly “social” measure.

But universality as a principle of redistribution not only destroys the conditions for an effective social policy.

It prevents the principle of merit from pursuing its primary vocation, the just reward of the efforts of each one.

It renders obsolete any mechanism based on merit, implying to further help those who have provided a personal effort recognized as remarkable to achieve excellence.

In short – and this is why it is unfair under the guise of generosity – universality denies the specific value of the work accomplished by the student who, coming from a modest background, has been able to rise to the highest level. .

Admittedly, no one can reasonably expect UNEF to defend measures based on merit.

No more left-wing trade unions would take up what was for a long time the substantial marrow of the Republican ethic, namely the primacy of meritocracy over nepotism.

Among these, none would decry the division by two of the additional aid on merit, decided by the socialist government of François Hollande, directly contributing to the impoverishment of the most deserving students among the most precarious.

But that these same left-wing organizations, like the Unef, no longer even defend the allocation of aid based on criteria

contributing directly to the impoverishment of the most deserving students among the most precarious.

But that these same left-wing organizations, like the Unef, no longer even defend the allocation of aid based on criteria

contributing directly to the impoverishment of the most deserving students among the most precarious.

But that these same left-wing organizations, like the Unef, no longer even defend the allocation of aid based on criteria

which could be considered the first condition of any

calls for astonishment to say the least.

The idea of ​​a universal autonomy allowance deprives the public debate of a fair reflection on the insufficiency of the amount of scholarships on social criteria, and on the relevance of the allocation criteria which exclude children from the middle class. and do not secure students from poor backgrounds.

Lyvann Vate

We cannot reduce the problem of student precariousness to a debate between the supporters of a "more distributive" social policy and the opponents of "assistantship": here, it is the very method of distribution that is questionable. because its unconditionality transforms social assistance into anti-social assistance.

Presented as the panacea to a serious problem, the autonomy allowance suffocates a debate which is already struggling to emerge, on the responses to student precariousness.

Considering the State as a kind of counter after which one could, on "simple request", obtain a monthly sum much higher than any scholarship level, and even higher than the income from a part-time job at which the modest students often have recourse, the idea of ​​a universal autonomy allowance deprives the public debate of a fair reflection on the insufficiency of the amount of scholarships on social criteria, and on the relevance of the award criteria which exclude middle-class children and fail to secure students from poor backgrounds.

Moreover, it disqualifies in principle the devices based on merit.

The scandalous drop in the merit scholarship is never denounced by these leftist unions - because

they refuse the mere mention of this value – even though it affects the most hard-working and the most promising without lifting them out of sometimes very strong precariousness.

The duration of eligibility for the merit scholarship is never called into question, whereas, restricted to the first post-baccalaureate years, it makes the most brilliant scholarship students more precarious during their master's years.

The debate on boarding schools of excellence has never been properly posed or led, whereas they were precisely intended to prepare, in the best conditions, the most talented and hardworking students from modest backgrounds for the baccalaureate diploma to then engage serenely in their university education.

it affects the most hard-working and the most promising without lifting them out of sometimes very severe precariousness.

The duration of eligibility for the merit scholarship is never called into question, whereas, restricted to the first post-baccalaureate years, it makes the most brilliant scholarship students more precarious during their master's years.

The debate on boarding schools of excellence has never been properly posed or led, whereas they were precisely intended to prepare, in the best conditions, the most talented and hardworking students from modest backgrounds for the baccalaureate diploma to then engage serenely in their university education.

it affects the most hard-working and the most promising without lifting them out of sometimes very severe precariousness.

The duration of eligibility for the merit scholarship is never called into question, whereas, restricted to the first post-baccalaureate years, it makes the most brilliant scholarship students more precarious during their master's years.

The debate on boarding schools of excellence has never been properly posed or led, whereas they were precisely intended to prepare, in the best conditions, the most talented and hardworking students from modest backgrounds for the baccalaureate diploma to then engage serenely in their university education.

restricted to the first post-baccalaureate years, it makes the most brilliant scholarship students precarious during their master's years.

The debate on boarding schools of excellence has never been properly posed or led, whereas they were precisely intended to prepare, in the best conditions, the most talented and hardworking students from modest backgrounds for the baccalaureate diploma to then engage serenely in their university education.

restricted to the first post-baccalaureate years, it makes the most brilliant scholarship students precarious during their master's years.

The debate on boarding schools of excellence has never been properly posed or led, whereas they were precisely intended to prepare, in the best conditions, the most talented and hardworking students from modest backgrounds for the baccalaureate diploma to then engage serenely in their university education.

We can superimpose a real recognition of merit for some and a more protective system of scholarships for all: the two imply in any case to take into account the singular paths and the income of the family, which rejects the principle of universality .

Lyvann Vate

Furthermore, we can very well promote merit-based aid for the most hard-working and an improvement in the safety net for the others.

We can superimpose a real recognition of merit for some and a more protective system of scholarships for all: the two imply in any case to take into account the singular paths and the income of the family, which rejects the principle of universality .

This debate on student precariousness could not take place during the presidential campaign, during which issues related to education, higher education and youth were largely ignored.

But it would obviously require agreeing to make distinctions according to social situations by abandoning the idea of ​​unconditional aid – which also entails massive rejection of the taxpayer – and by calibrating aid in such a way as to better support students more in trouble.

In the same way, revaluing the merit of brilliant students from precarious backgrounds, recognizing the value of the individual efforts made, allowing the