That is what the CDJA, the youth department of the CDA, stated. Purchasing power of university students decreases 2.37 percent, while HBO students contribute around 1.9 percent.
The income of students doesn’t rise, while the rent, the health insurance premium and the tuition fees do increase. The VAT increase also makes the everyday groceries shopping more expensive.
Struggling
“These combinations result in a generation that seems to have it worse than its parents and is struggling with increasingly expensive and more inaccessible education and a devastating competition culture,” writes CDJA president Lotte Schipper.
The outcomes differ a bit for university and HBO (higher professional education) students. On average, higher professional education students pay less rent than university students – they often live in small towns where the housing shortage is not so bad – but they also receive less money from their parents.
The halving of tuition fees in half for first-year students is not included here. The slashing applies only to some part of the students, writes the CDJA, and the consequences for the purchasing power are not yet clear.
The CDA-youngsters come up with a series of recommendations. They do not ask for a return from the basic grant, although the introduction of the new loan system was, according to this report, “the starting signal for debt generation.”
Sham constructions
They do want the supplementary grant to be expanded and the higher interest on student debts to be cancelled. In addition, they ask for more student housing, a ban on unpaid internships and a harder approach to ‘sham constructions’ in the labor market in which students have to work as a self-employed person while they are actually employed.
The youngsters borrowed the method from a previous study by the national student organization ISO, which endorses the results, as the National Student Union does.
