You probably remember that a few weeks ago I wrote about all the benefits students are entitled to in Finland. The monetary part, which is at the same time in my opinion also the part with the most profound impact on student’s life, was established some 30 years ago. However, students have been receiving the same monthly allowance for the last 14 years now. Yes, the state has been rude enough not to take into account the inflation or changes in living costs for all those years.

But students want more, they always want more. Well, who doesn’t. For several months already Finnish students have been quite eloquent regarding their demands. Being Finnish, they have kept it quite simple and to the point: “We want more money.” No babbling. There’s been lots of attention dedicated to the topic in both student newspapers issued by universities across the country as well as in the mainstream media. The response was sometimes mixed among the plebeians, but never among the students who know exactly what they are after. Not to mention that 127.000 people have signed the petition in favor of the rise (here’s the pdf listing everyone who signed it).

The government has been quite silent and didn’t take any concrete actions. Students have had it enough and took the matter to the streets. They want a 15% increase on their 260€ per month. But the minister of the finance did the calculations and figured out that this would cost the state more than 70 million Euros a year more. I understand both sides and as I’ve already written about it a few weeks ago, I think that the idea of student state support is an excellent one. Nevertheless, I think that students are pushing their luck a bit too far on this matter.

I’m not saying that they should go shopping around for a different model as this would result in benecide–killing of the benefits altogether. But some of them don’t really get it how good they have it, even though it’s just 260€+ Euros each month. I’ve spoken to a few of my Finnish friends who were not even aware that I am not receiving any such monthly benefits from any country. And outside of Nordic countries, as far as I know, no other country has anything like that. Although Finnish students are arguing that they get the least money of all the Nordic countries.

Of course, it’s wonderful if practically 80% of your rent is paid for by the state, plus you get the pocket money for free. And you get free education and many other benefits. You should be rather happy. Really, come on, it’s an incentive, a stimulation, a support and not free life kind of support. But then again even though the inflation in Finland has been extremely low and annually it never exceeded 3,4% in the last 14 years (it was only 0,9% in 2005 and 0,2% in 2004), it did eat away the total value.

I’ll have to dig a bit, but it would be interesting to find out how this model even got started in the first place: what were the political and what were the real reasons for it, how did those benefits evolve, and so on. I’ll make a follow up on the topic when I find out more about it.

Mladen

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 at 11:37 am and is filed under Education, Finland, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.