BAföG applications: Digitization with fatal consequences

Across Germany, student unions are struggling with the failed digitization of BAföG applications. Students have to wait a long time for their money. New applications are only approved after months.

Students have to wait months for government support money to land in their accounts after an initial application. The reasons for this are a failed digitization of the applications, always new rules and thus revised offices. In addition, there is a high level of sick leave and a shortage of skilled workers. This is the result of research by Wirelessthe young offering of ARD and ZDF.

“I’ve been waiting five months now and some of my friends are significantly longer. It’s really very difficult for students who don’t come from a good background to survive, let alone focus on their studies,” reports student Daniel G. He is not the only one reporting. Reach again and again Wireless Messages from desperate students.

Especially at the beginning of their studies, students have high expenses. Rent, deposit, furnishings, semester fees and textbooks cost a lot of money, in addition to the already increased cost of living. Young people from less wealthy families are therefore urgently dependent on state support – and the trend is rising. Around 467,000 students received state benefits under the Federal Training Assistance Act (BAföG) last year. According to the welfare association, around a third of all students live in poverty.

Staff hired to print online applications

But to get this money, you have to fill out an application, submit several forms and a stack of proof from your parents. Only a fraction of the submitted applications are error-free. “We have about one application under 200 that is complete,” said a clerk from Rhineland-Palatinate. The federal government also knows that the application has been a bureaucracy monster for years. According to the German Student Union, a 2010 study by the Federal Government’s Regulatory Control Council found that 99 percent of paper applications – there was no digital application procedure at the time – were incomplete.

Since September 2021, the application can be submitted online with BAföG-Digital in all federal states. But then the problems begin. According to the umbrella organization of the nationwide 57 student unions, the digitized BAföG application has “fatal consequences in practice”. “The BAföG offices of the student unions have to print out the BAföG applications submitted online by hand. The printing load in the BAföG offices is so high that additional staff have to be hired specifically to print out digital applications. “That is digitization ad absurdum !”, says the General Secretary of the German Student Union, Matthias Anbuhl.

There are also bottlenecks with the paper itself. The annual report of the Studentenwerk Ost-Niedersachsen states: Paper shortage in the BAföG department in December 2021. Other departments of the Studentenwerk were asked for help.

Student unions demand speed in digitization

The enormous workload is openly confirmed by several offices and employees in various federal states. Complete initial applications for the winter semester, when many new students come to the universities, are only approved after two to three months at the earliest. It can take a few more weeks for the money to be in the account. “Since the support services under the BAföG are paid in advance at the end of the month for the following month, in the worst case there can be a period of four to five weeks between the final processing of the application and the payment to the applicant,” says one body in Rhineland-Palatinate. The fact that the money is only paid out after six months due to the failed digitization, constantly changing rules and revised offices is not an isolated case, but reality.

Due to the long processing time, many students ask when their money will finally come. “There is no platform to be able to communicate with the students in encrypted form,” complains Anbuhl from the German Student Union. For data protection reasons, incoming e-mail inquiries must always be answered by post if they contain personal data. Here, too, there is more work for clerks in the offices for training support due to the lack of digitization.

In order to get the situation under control, the Deutsches Studentenwerk demands the rapid introduction of an e-file and e-notice for faster communication with the students. A glimmer of hope can be seen in Saxony-Anhalt, because the state in which BAföG-Digital was developed and first introduced for all federal states will, according to the local Ministry of Science, start introducing a BAföG-E-Akte in 2023.