Eva Lotta Lindma, Veronika Matysková
13th of October, 2023
Picture retrieved from here
Seventy percent of students in the Netherlands work during their studies. This is the highest percentage in the European Union, with the next country being Denmark where it is 50 percent, find out more here.
If students are working, according to the EU rules, they are now considered to be employees in the Netherlands, and from there onwards they are also eligible for more rights, such as student financing. Due to students challenging the previous limit of 56 hours a month, DUO (Dienst Uitvoering Onderwijs), which is a Dutch governmental institution, has issued a more lenient limit. Currently, students who work at least 32 hours per month also have a chance to receive student financing from DUO.
Full-time study consists of 40 hours a week, which adds up to 160 hours a month, this time can consist of lectures, tutorials, practicals, reading time or assignments. Part-time work is less than 36 hours and more than 12 hours a week, ranging from 48 to 144 hours a month. To illustrate the students’ situation, we interviewed a student from Slovakia studying in the Netherlands, who has been receiving the supplementary grant for the past two years and works in the service sector. In her words “It is quite a big burden to work a certain amount of hours to get study finance”. The interviewee admitted that, on average, she has to work between 90 to 100 hours a month to cover living costs and housing. If we were to combine 160 hours of studying per month with 100 hours of working per month, it adds up to 260 hours of labour. If we assumed that such a person would proportionally divide their 260 hours of work to five days working week, these studying and working hours combined would add up to 13 hours of labour per day.
This raises the question: How is the supplementary grant provided by DUO legitimised and should we question it?
Recently, there has been a shift in eligibility criteria for the supplementary grant, which is a performance-related grant provided by the DUO. As the name suggests, this grant is related to the labour market performance. In the past, European Union full-time students were required to work at least 56 hours per month to be eligible for the supplementary grant. However, the eligibility criteria for the supplementary grant have been changed recently and students have to work at least 32 hours per month. Only in the cases when the student works in the Netherlands for over 6 months, then 24 hours a month fulfil the eligibility criteria for student finance. Supplementary grant is given for the first 4 years which is a standard length of HBO and university studies in the Netherlands. A supplementary grant essentially becomes a grant if the student obtains their diploma within the diploma period, thus 10 years. If students fail to do so, they are obliged to pay the money back.
The supplementary grant is legitimised by providing student finance to promote accessibility of higher education for EU full-time students studying in the Netherlands and ensuring that financial barriers do not prevent individuals from pursuing their higher education. It is specifically targeting students who are not able to support themselves financially and whose parents are not able to support them financially either, find out more here. This points to education as a responsibility of parents and students themselves, which is limiting the responsibility of the state for higher education, as it is similarly argued in the article by Tronto. Students must demonstrate their financial need for supplementary grants by providing their income and the income of their parents, see more here. The supplementary grant is calculated based on parents’ income under the assumption that parents support their student child. This assumes that students’ parents financially support their studying child, but what if students’ parents simply do not have the means to support their studying child? The interviewee admitted that her parents do not have the financial means to support her fully. In other cases, there might be distorted relationships in the family and for this reason, parents do not financially support the student child.
Furthermore, students must declare their work contracts, pay slips, bank statements and the amount of hours they worked per month to be eligible for the supplementary grant. Such eligibility criteria are in place to ensure that supplementary grants are allocated to students who truly require additional financial support for their education. The maximum amount of money allocated via supplementary grant is 416 euros per month, read more here.
Should we question it?
Would you believe me if I said that the number of hours a student must complete is misleading? According to the European Union laws, there is no minimum requirement of hours worked that a student needs to reach to qualify for the student financing, find out more here.
Students constantly alternate between acquiring their higher education, to get ready for the future workforce, and already actively participating in the workforce (usually in low-paid jobs). They join the labour force to finance their studies, all while they rely on government aid to provide additional support. Students are economically dependent on unstable employment work, where it is not guaranteed that they will reach the necessary hours to receive the supplementary grant, since often the work contract is flexible, meaning the hours worked can change from one month to another. This means that on a month-to-month basis, if a student cannot work enough hours, DUO can cancel the supplementary grant. Moreover, it is necessary to finish one’s studies in the given amount of time to receive the grant as a gift.
The policy transfers responsibility over education solemnly onto students. To illustrate, our interviewee said that this is making her life very emotionally draining. She has to withstand university stress and work stress, “What if I do not finish my studies, what if something goes wrong?”. This stress of being fully responsible for one’s own life has resulted in students abandoning social connections, caring for and maintaining the well-being of themselves and the people around them to make deadlines, “it is just so much”.
The original purpose of government assistance was to counteract the individualization of daily life, meaning that people are obliged to be self-reliant regarding childcare, primary education and so forth. This high degree of independence promoted by the supplementary grant policy pushes for self-reliance instead of providing relief or a safety-net, which results in life being financially unpredictable.
In short, the supplementary grant is legitimised via eligibility criteria with the goal to prevent economic barriers in individuals pursuing higher education. However, as we argued, we should question it due to its focus on individualization of responsibility and policy enhancement of the labour market participation instead of focusing on providing the safety-net for students. So, next time you hear Dolly Parton telling you that people work from 9 to 5, know that students work much more. International students from the European Union work at least 9.7 hours up to 14 hours a day if we assume that students take weekends off. Therefore, we question whether the supplementary grant policy is truly preventing economic barriers in pursuing higher education.