A frustrating start to my last semester

This is (hopefully) my last semester at university and the first weeks of this term have already cost me my nerves. It all started when I went to enroll in the courses I need to finish my degree. I had forgotten to pay the ÖH fees, admittedly my fault but still no justification for the complications I had to face as a consequence. Starting enrolment two days after everyone else means taking a place after the first 30 on the waiting list, in a course where only 15 students are accepted. So what are these students, doomed to just watch others study, supposed to do? Well, there aren’t a lot of options, and none of them is really promising. You could wait until next semester, be the first on the computer when online enrolment starts and hope for better luck this time. It’s a challenge, considering that courses are often full within 60 seconds! So you better not need to get into too many courses too urgently, that just won’t work.
Or you could worry about retaining your family subsidy and other benefits. At least I was lucky this year. I really needed the courses urgently because it’s my last semester and I’m having a baby in October. I think being a working mother is enough of a challenge.

Therefore my professors, who were very understanding, granted me a place in their courses. Still, the situation is unacceptable in general. And I just can’t seem to get our education minister’s words out of my head “we need more university graduates, we need more students”. Then create the necessary conditions and don’t just put another 30 students on the waiting lists. I’m fed up with the prevailing conditions. I’ve been studying for five years now but could have easily finished in four years if I had been given the chance. But honestly, with our politics real reforms just aren’t possible.

When our ministers sit down at the table to craft reforms, they apparently have no idea about the real conditions we are dealing with at university. Now they want to force higher education on kindergarten and primary teachers. If it wasn’t obvious already, we don’t have enough money to fund our current educational system. Why should a kindergarten teacher have to study until the age of 25? The state doesn’t seem to consider that instead of these teachers earning their own money at the age of 18 they are dependent on state subsidies a lot longer. And what is more, kindergarten will be a lot more expensive, I mean, no university graduate will work for the salary kindergarten teachers currently earn. I think that our government places too much importance on higher education without being able to create the necessary conditions in order to actually implement these ideas, like demanding university graduation from kindergarten and primary teachers.

Universities are already grappling with a lack of money. They are not able to employ enough professors, which leads to the kinds of grievances I’ve already laid out. Also, the equipment in the classrooms leaves a lot to be desired. When we come into our writing courses each week, we spend the first five minutes of class searching for a working computer, a search which is often without success. The library is also poorly equipped; sometimes it does not even offer the books we are supposed to read in certain courses. The whole building is not conducive to getting anything done. In addition to the dilapidated classrooms, there’s sometimes working toilet on two floors and several broken windows that cannot be properly closed any more. But we are just students, so why spend money on us… Many politicians seem to think that tax money is better invested in other projects, like expensive election campaigns. At the same time important areas such as education and even healthcare, as we can currently see with the drastic reduction of hospital beds, are often neglected. They don’t seem to realize that education is our future and that our citizens have to be adequately educated. I sometimes think that politicians don’t really share this opinion. As long as their high incomes are secure, the country has nothing to worry about. Absolutely nothing…