Finances
BAföG: Study start aid
Matthias Anbuhl, Chairman of the Executive Board of Deutsches Studierendenwerk, comments on today's launch of the new study start aid for first-year students from families receiving social benefits:
"The new study aid is a good, important support at the start of studies for students from families receiving social benefits. However, one structural problem of BAföG is also fully reflected in the actual implementation of the Study start aid: the still incomplete digitalization with its many media discontinuities.
Just like the BAföG applications submitted online, the BAföG offices of the student unions will also have to laboriously print out, stamp and file the online applications for study start aid in a paper file. And this in times of staff and specialist shortages as well as a highly complex BAföG system that is still not streamlined in terms of bureaucracy.
Just as with BAföG, only the application process for the study start aid has been digitized, but not all other steps in the process. In order for this new instrument to really be paid out quickly and fulfil its political intention, the federal states, preferably in cooperation with the federal government, must finally push ahead with the complete digitalization of BAföG quickly and comprehensively, and the federal states must provide the BAföG offices of the student unions with sufficient resources."
DSW information on the new study start aid