Scholarship initiative

In Switzerland, students have access to scholarships of varying amounts. The conditions for granting scholarships are regulated by the cantons and, to a certain extent, at the intercantonal level. The Swiss Student Union wants all students in Switzerland to have the same rights when it comes to scholarships and has therefore launched the scholarship initiative.

Development and current situation in Switzerland

In order to explain the problems with the Swiss scholarship system, we first need to clarify what exactly a scholarship is. It is a financial grant for young people from low-income families so that they can pursue the education that best suits them. Scholarships are therefore essential for fair access to education.

A brief look back at history helps to clarify the current situation. The Swiss educational landscape has changed significantly over the past twenty years. New types of higher education institutions have been established, the number of students in tertiary education has risen, and the permeability of the systems has been further expanded. The number of students has tripled since 1990, from around 85,000 to almost 260,000 in 2009¹. However, the development of the scholarship system in Switzerland does not support this conclusion. Adjusted for inflation, the total volume of scholarships in Switzerland has fallen by almost a quarter since 1993². At the same time, the number of students in gainful employment is rising sharply, with three quarters of students working alongside their studies³.

Another problem is the federal structure of the Swiss scholarship system. The criteria for eligibility, the amount of scholarships, and the number of scholarship recipients vary from canton to canton. The Intercantonal Scholarship Agreement⁴, which came into force on March 1, 2013, and to which 18 cantons have acceded to date, aims to achieve a certain degree of harmonization, but deliberately leaves the cantons a great deal of leeway⁵. The calculation criteria remain the responsibility of the individual cantons, and the proposed minimum amount for a full scholarship is not high enough to cover living expenses.

As a result, unfair differences between cantons remain: two students enrolled at the same university and studying the same subject may receive different amounts of financial aid, depending on which canton their parents live in. To address this imbalance, the VSS has launched the scholarship initiative.

The initiative

In spring 2010, the Swiss Student Union decided to launch a popular initiative with the aim of making access to scholarships fairer⁶. On January 20, 2012, the initiative was submitted with more than 117,000 signatures. In its statement of June 23, 2013, the Federal Council recommended rejecting the initiative, but at the same time submitted an indirect counterproposal, a total revision of the Education Assistance Act. The counterproposal was subsequently debated at length by Parliament. While parliamentarians agreed that scholarships are very important for equal opportunities and that the scholarship system in Switzerland needs to be improved, they also wanted the cantons to remain responsible for awarding scholarships. On June 14, 2015, the initiative was finally rejected by the people and the indirect counterproposal thus came into force⁷.

The scholarship initiative aims to standardize the rules for higher vocational education, e.g., at a higher technical college (tertiary B), or for education at a university of applied sciences, teacher training college, ETH, or university (tertiary A) throughout Switzerland. The Swiss Student Union considers this system to be fairer than the current one, in which the cantons determine in different ways how much they want to spend on scholarships and how many students receive them and how much they receive. The scholarship initiative would have made access to scholarships and education fairer.

And after that?

The Swiss Student Union is always committed to improving the social situation of students, and this includes scholarships. To this end, the Union closely monitors the plans and decisions of the cantons and the federal government in this area.