Soaring costs, shrinking government grants plunge French students into crisis
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Loading... - Elise Blanchet
- 04 Nov 2022
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The cost of living has become unbearable for many university students in France, as inflation continues to erode their purchasing power, which was already not very strong to begin with.
A viral video posted Tuesday by Maelle, a 20-year-old political science student, bears witness to this tragic situation.
It shows Maelle in tears, crying in distress over her daily life. She denounced in particular the paltry amount of her grant from France’s Regional Center for University and School Works.
"Every year for the past four years, they have reduced my grant," she said, explaining that she gets a monthly grant of less than $100 to meet her needs while she needs $400 a month just to cover her rent. She sees it as an impossible task.
She also explained that her parents, who live in Mayotte – a small island off East Africa that technically is a part of France – "don't have the means" to pay for her studies and that as a result, she has to work 20 hours a week to try to support herself.
Maelle explained that her father is unemployed and that if her mother got a raise, it would all go just to cope with the price of food, which is very high in France’s overseas territories.
On Mayotte, cheese costs €10 ($9.78), she said, adding that with a total monthly income of around $2,000 for two people, her parents have only the "bare minimum."
"My studies are taking a hit, but I'm working and I'm not saving anything," she added, before asking how many hours she will have to work and how hard to pay for her life.
The body that gives the grants responded by saying that it "can't do anything," she said.
She added that after asking the body for emergency support, she was refused, even after she worked the entire summer to make more money.
Maelle's poignant video has been viewed over 4 million times. A crowdfunding campaign was launched, and more than $13,000 was raised, leading her to share the money raised with student support groups.
Hundreds of thousands of students in distress
Maelle’s life of distress and constant worrying is far from uncommon, and indeed is felt by hundreds of thousands of French university students. Read More...
