I recently had a conversation with a lovely elderly gentlemen who sat next to me on the train. It started out with some easy and insignificant small talk but gradually turned towards more serious topics. The current political situation in the country, the government, and how everything seems to be going for the worse. The gentleman in question was in his sixties or seventies, I gather, and university-educated with a long career, probably in the public sector (this is just my guess) behind him. Talking about politics eventually led us to talking about budget cuts and cuts to education more specifically. He started reminiscing about his own days being a student. Back then, state-provided grants didn’t exist. Those who wanted to study had to take out a loan or rely on their parents’ or relatives’ support. No ‘easy money’ existed. This is why the man had a hard time understanding the fuss students were making over proposed cuts to study grants. ‘We didn’t have any financial help, so is it such a big deal if you lose part of your already rather generous support?’ he asked me. ‘Besides, you have your entire working life ahead of you. That is, you have the time to repay the financial investment you made when studying.’ Finding work after graduation was also straightforward, he remembered. You just had to put in the extra effort to go find it.
At this point, and even though I was enjoying the conversation (I mean, how often do you get to have a chat with the person sat next to you on the train?) I had to protest. I felt like he had profoundly misunderstood something and that we weren’t on the same page. It seemed to me that the world he was talking about didn’t exist. Despite having to turn to your parents or the bank for financial support, the world he was describing seemed to be surprisingly carefree. And to an extent it was. Back in the sixties and seventies the working life was very different from the current one. Unemployment rates were low and having a degree from university pretty much guaranteed you a job. And not just any job, but one that pretty much matched your qualifications and paid well. Taking out a loan wasn’t necessarily any nicer back then but paying it back was definitely easier. In 2016, with the recession in its eight year and graduate unemployment at its all-time high, no wonder many students have qualms about taking out a huge loan. Many are asking themselves: What if at the end of my studies I can’t find a job?
Your average Finnish student spends about five years at university. In the likely situation that the proposed cuts to student support take effect, in the future a student would be entitled to a 250 euro-grant per month and a 650 euro-loan per month. Over five years, that loan would total almost 30 000 euros, provided that a student takes out the maximum sum for nine months of the year. In Helsinki, where affordable student housing is scarce and rent in the private sector eats up most of students’ disposable income, nine hundred euros a month is, for many, the minimum needed to pay for housing and food. Thus, making student support more loan-based would drastically increase the amount of money students would owe. The investment referred to by the gentleman on the train would indeed be huge.
When estimating the importance of investing financially in yourself, it is also worth considering the varying degrees of ‘return’ on that investment. It’s one thing to take out a twenty thousand euro loan if you’re studying medicine or law, both of which are fields which prepare students directly for certain professions, with relatively stable prospects and good salaries. The situation is quite different for many other students from fields related to humanities and social sciences that do not offer such clear-cut options and where finding steady jobs might be easier said than done. In the midst of the current conversation placing emphasis on profit and financial success we tend to forget about the importance of arts, humanities and social sciences. These are fields which prepare students for a wide array of professions, albeit professions that are not so easy to pin down. Students graduating from these fields go on to become journalists, specialists, and knowledge workers of various persuasions. And also teachers. The very people whose job it is to teach, to inform and, in their own way, raise future generations of leaders, artists, doctors, nurses, lawyers… Their work might not directly benefit the national economy the same way a successful tech company will, nor will the holders of these degrees become rich. They are, however, the ones who cultivate the seeds of our future. Their input is crucial for the larger development of the country. Is that worthless? Do we value people’s input solely based on the direct financial impact it has?
For anyone feeling unsure about taking out a loan, there is the option of working, which most students take even now. Interestingly, though, this isn’t something the government would like to encourage. And this is why the proposed cuts might actually prove to be counter-productive. Everyone knows that one of Finland’s biggest problems at the moment is that we do not have enough people in the labor market keeping the economy going and supporting those of us who are not in full-time employment: pensioners, students, the unemployed. So by making student support increasingly loan-based and decreasing the number of years we are entitled to receive study support, the government is also trying to encourage us to graduate faster. But what if, despite this arguably noble endeavor, students don’t buy into this line of thinking? What if they are quite simply too scared to borrow massive amounts of money? What if they choose to work extra to foot the bill of living while studying? If students need to work even more than before, they are more likely to cut down on their school work. This would then obviously lead to them graduating more slowly. In the end, then, trying to get people to study faster might lead to the very opposite outcome. Not to mention the extra stress that having to juggle work, university and personal finances would cause when the future looks bleak at best.
Another potentially damaging effect of study grant cuts is how it would disproportionately target students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Students with little or no help from their parents might feel even more intimidated by the prospect of tens of thousands of euros in debt. One of the most salient features of the Finnish education system has been its inclusiveness. It has been considered that it is important to make sure that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are also given a fair chance to pursue higher education. A country as small as Finland cannot afford to say no to even a small portion of its potential just because that potential might struggle to fund their education. It is not sane economically any more than it is morally. Meritocracy is one of the corner stones of our democracy. How would endangering equality of access affect the overall nature of our higher education system?
All of the above places us as students at a drastically different situation from that of our predecessors, including that affable gentleman on the train. We are not facing the same future than earlier generations. The whole of Europe is struggling to create future prospects for its youth. This isn’t to say that we are the first generation to face an uncertain and, at times, scary future. Rather, it is to say that the challenges coming our way are more complicated and universal than probably ever before. Seeing the future is impossible, and even planning for it is becoming increasingly difficult. If these are the odds, are we so lazy and ungrateful in the end? And how fair is it to make such comparisons between our generations?
Overall, it seems, this trend is but a part of a larger development: putting numbers over people. At the end of the day, however, we have to ask ourselves: is educating young people something on which we want to put a price tag? Is it something whose worth can only be measured in money? What is the worth of all those saved euros? These questions probably don’t have easy answers but they desperately need to be answered.