Anyone who is interested in the state of civic engagement and democracy should also be interested in what student organisations are doing. Why, you ask?

Outside of lecture halls, many lifelong friendships start in student organisations’ facilities and events where the organisations bring people together. For a young student, student organisations are not just a way to make new friends but also places that offer peer support and well-being, or someone to talk to in a new, strange city.

At a time when even many highly educated people are struggling to find work, student organisations can offer a surprising advantage. Indeed, student organisations are a great place to practice the working life skills that everyone’s always talking about. Many active student members are more than familiar with things like meetings, agendas, and budgeting, and I would go as far as to say that sometimes students know these things even better than people in the “real” working life. Students have experience with organising different events, from movie nights for a dozen people to major events for several thousand attendants. These skills will probably come in handy in organising a couple of work seminars.

Above all, student organisations contribute to creating aware members of society who learn to look at the world around us with interest and curiosity. These are people who, when coming face to face with a problem, don’t just shrug their shoulders but take action. Under the Universities Act, Finnish universities have an important educational task: to prepare students for active, aware, and critical citizenship. It is precisely this educational task where student organisations can have a critical influence. And this is a time when we need active, aware, and critical citizens more than ever.

At the same time, the government is making it harder for students to make a living. The index freezing of student financial aid, cuts in housing allowance, transferring students to the scope of the housing supplement… During the current government term, at worst up to a third of student financial aid has been cut. Students are increasingly reliant on student loans for their livelihoods. If they choose to not take out a loan, the only option is to work while studying.

A student who is barely eking out a living can’t focus on their studies as much as they focus on figuring out their finances. And a student working while also studying full time spends their free time at work. Neither of these options is ideal if we hope to see students growing into aware citizens or, well, find friends and feel well in general.

Budget cuts affecting students create human tragedies and undermine the foundation for civic engagement. When students don’t get opportunities to grow into aware citizens, the prerequisites for democracy become undermined for a price that we will have to eventually pay.

More information:

Laura Heino
Board member, social policy (subsistence and housing), organisations and associations
+358 449 065 005
laura.heino@syl.fi