France FAGE – Ominous time for French students!

A decisive period for French students and overall for French people, is reaching an end. Lots of important national meetings took place. Last week, the election of regional representatives was organized. This vote was really strained because the French radical right party registered high scores, sometimes even collecting the maximum of votes in the first round of elections. Thanks to an important citizen mobilisation for the second round, this party did not obtain any region’s presidency. Nevertheless, it is our duty to carry on with our popular education action together with numeruous young people, in order to help them to realize that voting for this party which promotes hate and rejection of the others (migrants, Muslims etc…) is not the solution to show their distrust of politicians. (https://lc.cx/4im5)

The end of the year is the period when parliamentarians are voting state budget for the next year. Debates related to higher education budget were closely followed by our national board. Two topics were particularly relevant. Firstly, the decrease of universities’ budget leads to insufficient means to face the growing number of students and to invest in the approved pedagogic innovations (https://lc.cx/4imw). Secondly, public subsidies for student life, dedicated to the CROUS (estab-lishments that manage support systems for students) are decreased. This puts an extra pressure on students by increasing student rents or meal prices, provided by these establishments. (https://lc.cx/4imc)
 

This autumn has also been the period when the government and parliamentarians attacked housing support schemes for students and young workers. Now, in order to save money, the government is trying to modify the criteria used to calculate these aids for young workers, although the majority of them have an insecure job. Youth organizations mobilize themselves to prevent the Government from attacking these support schemes. (http://urlz.fr/2QJE).

Students are facing a difficult period, which is ominous for the next years, because we can see that the government is questioning a lot higher education systems, making choices that go against education’s democratization objective.

Alice Clément – Vice-Chair in charge of Socials Affairs