Students and trainees can be happy. From the winter semester there will be more BAFÖG. In particular, allowances and assets are significantly increased. However, student representatives are critical, because the cost of living has also risen.
Bafög recipients will receive more money in the winter semester. With the votes of the traffic light coalition and the left, the Bundestag decided on an almost six percent increase in the BAFÖG rates and a significant increase in tax allowances and protective assets, which should increase the group of BAFÖG beneficiaries. The rates will also be increased for students and trainees.
Union and AfD voted against the reform. "The previous funding has excluded too many. We are reversing this trend," said Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger from the FDP. The Bafög rate for students increases from 427 to 452 euros per month. Anyone who no longer lives with their parents can also get 360 euros for the rent instead of the previous 325 euros. The traffic light coalition had added something because of the inflation, originally a BAFÖG increase of five percent was planned.
Student representatives, the German student union and opposition politicians criticize the increase as too low in view of the rising prices for food, energy and housing. According to a study, almost a third of all students in Germany live in poverty.
According to a study by the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband, 30 percent of all students are affected. Four out of five of the students living alone live below the poverty line. The average income of poor students is 802 euros. This puts them 463 euros below the poverty line. Not only 80 percent of single-person households are disproportionately affected by poverty, but also 45 percent of students with student loans.
According to the plans of the traffic light, the reform is only the first step. In the long term, BAFÖG is to become more "parent-independent" by paying the basic child security plan planned by the SPD, Greens and FDP directly to students - as the "basic basis for student financing".
