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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 27, No. 2. 1964.
Austria — More Money For Students
Austria
More Money For Students
For five years the students of Austria had pleaded for an improvement in their study-conditions and demanded as one of their main items better scholarships.
Now at last their efforts seem to have succeeded. The idea of a legally sanctioned right to claim a scholarship—which had been going round in papers for years and had frequently found reflection in budget debates of the National Council—has been converted into reality at last. The National Council unanimously passed the scholarship-low in the session of October 16th, 1963. The law came into force on November 1st, 1963.
Until then the scholarships, even those granted by the government, somehow had the character of alms and were "grants" in the literal meaning of the word. So it happened that the amount of funds provided for scholarship purposes did not cover needs. The job of granting scholarships was split up between a number of institutions which carried out their business according to their own rules.
Such inadequacies will be corrected by the new scholarshlp-law, according to which every student who satisfies certain conditions, has a legal claim on a scholarship—which is only democratic.
The two main conditions are financial need and a favourable progress of studies.
- The applicant must not have finished another academic study.
- The applicant must be an Austrian citizen or a citizen of a formerly Austrian crown-land, speaking German as his mother tongue and living permanently in Austria.
- He must have started studios at least ten years after passing the "Matura," the examination enabling a person to study at an academic institute.
The conditions for financial need and favourable progress are laid down in detail more generously than they were with the mere grants. This means the majority of Austrian students will be entitled to claim scholarship. The amount of the individual scholarships will vary from 500 Austrian Shillings (about £7) to 1,000 Austrian Shillings (about £14) monthly, in ten equal payments from October to July.
This new law is, of course, welcome, but it comes late—about five minutes to midnight. Austria was already on the point of losing her reputation in the intellectual and scientific field because of the abuses in her universities and other academic institutes.
So the scholarship-law is to be regarded as only the starting point of a general improvement programme, as there are many problems still to be solved, especially the demand for more professorships and fellowships, and the need for improvement in the boarding-problems of students.