STUDENT organisations have been protesting because the government, as part of the cuts to social spending, decided to stop the misguided practice of giving grants to all university students. The ludicrous, indiscriminate grant was one of the first measures introduced by the Christofias government when it was labouring under the illusion that by mindlessly squandering the taxpayer’s money it would build a fairer society.
It was a good illustration of the emotional way in which President Christofias forged policy, because there was no rational justification for such a measure. A grant would be given in a country which had a shortage of university graduates, as an incentive for youth to pursue a degree course. There was no need for such an incentive in Cyprus which boasted an excessive number of graduates – and certainly more than a small economy could employ.
How many marketing and PR graduates could the economy employ? If anything, the government should have been giving incentives for youths to learn a trade, as there are not enough plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. Student grants were a crudely populist measure without rational justification. The government would no doubt argue that by not giving a grant, youths from poorer families would not be able to go to university, but it could have offered 200 scholarships every year to poor students, at a tiny fraction of the total grant cost.
Even this would not have been necessary for good students from low-income families as they would be able to attend Cyprus University and TEPAK, which are of a high standard and are free. Giving grants to students to attend state universities, when they are already costing the taxpayer about €17,000 each, serves no real purpose other than to encourage the state dependency culture that already plagues our society.
It is because of this poisonous dependency and entitlement culture that student organisations have been protesting. And their protests are being backed by populist politicians who, at the same time criticise the government for not cutting its spending. But even the targeting of grants that is opposed by students is laughable. Grants would still be given to youths from families with an annual income of less than €80,000. This threshold would ensure that more than 80 per cent of students were still eligible for the grant and the saving would be negligible. The grant should have been given only to youths from families with a third of this income – they could have been given a higher grant as well – instead of carrying on giving it to children of well-off families and claiming that it is a targeted measure.
But now that the entitlement and dependency culture, financed by the taxpayer, has become so deeply-rooted, even the right-wing politicians are backing it.
