These cities which offer a “minimum student income”

Last year, Téo Didailler, 22, was enrolled in a bachelor’s degree at Sup’de com Montpellier, a private communication school at 7,300 euros per year. With a sailing instructor father and a home beautician mother, the young man would have struggled to finance his studies without the 3,850 euros in annual aid that fell to him from the sky. Nothing to do with the CROUS scholarships, awarded according to the parents’ income – Téo has not been eligible for them for two years. The miracle came from the minimum student income (RME) offered since 2011 by its town of origin, Plougastel-Daoulas (Finistère), 13,000 inhabitants. Aid which aims to support young people in the pursuit of their higher education. In ten years, 325 young people have benefited from it.

Dominique Cap, mayor (various right) of Plougastel-Daoulas, launched this initiative after discussing with one of his constituents, whose daughter dreamed of becoming a midwife: “She was not earning enough to finance her daughter’s studies, but her income did not allow her to receive a scholarship. “ By carrying out research on existing systems, Dominique Cap discovered that the town of Chenôve, in the suburbs of Dijon, had been offering a “minimum student income” since 1989. He sees it as a hell of a good idea.

Since then, around fifty towns in France – mainly small or medium-sized, of all political stripes – have followed: Grande-Synthe et Gravelines (Nord), Gannat (Allier), Vouziers (Ardennes), Poissy (Yvelines), Bolène (Vaucluse) , Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne (Savoie), Panazol (Haute-Vienne) … While the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the precariousness in which some students live, their dependence on income from odd jobs and the insufficiency of scholarships offered by the CROUS, the question of financing studies has resurfaced again. Could the RME, thought of as a complement to state stock exchanges and other existing mechanisms, be a solution?

Variable conditions and amounts

The RME being a local and optional aid, each municipality sets its conditions of allocation – which does not help the students to find their way around. And those who do not live in the town (them or their parents) cannot claim it. “This is the paradox of decentralization: the local policies put in place in France since the 1980s have proved to be essential in order to overcome the shortcomings of the national system, in particular the cost of higher education and the low level of coverage of scholarships. ‘State. But they also create losers ”, underlines Aurélien Casta, associate researcher at the University of Nanterre and Lille, specialist in public policies.

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