Department for Financially and Culturally Disadvantaged Students

occupied by Saad Shahriar (on an interim basis)

The department introduces itself:

All in all, ordinary employees as well as small entrepreneurs make up together approximately 50% of Germany’s social structure; nevertheless, both they and their children are almost excluded from higher education programmes. For instance, approx. 77 from 100 children from families with an academic background pursue a university degree, whereas it is only 23 from 100 children from working class families who decide to commence their studies. This is also noticeable at university. The parties involved know full well what we mean by that. The social experiences being made by people from working class families are often very difficult to comprehend by very conservative students from wealthier families and left-leaning students from more alternative academic backgrounds. Students coming from non-academic classes and/or with a family with an immigration history often feel alienated in the university environment. Surrounded by students with other social experiences, and oftentimes with more financial resources, it is not easy for the 10% of students from working class families. Even though especially these students can enrich their universities with their unconventional thinking and new perspectives.

For some time now, students from working class families at Münster University have formed a political unit for this specific purpose – in an autonomous department at AStA. The Department for Financially and Culturally Disadvantaged Students (“Referat für finanziell und kulturell benachteiligte Studierende”, short: “fikuS-Referat”) intends to keep the “social selection” within the educational sector as an important issue in the public eye and organizes e.g. public events about it. We are also helping you directly by campaigning for better counselling services and financial help during your studies.

The advisors introduce themselves:

Richard Dietrich – I am studying pedagogy and finance my studies by teaching German. I went to a special needs school and later switched to a “Hauptschule” (secondary school, offering lower secondary education) and therefore experienced social discrepancies and discrimination myself, and I want to stand up for a society without discrimination.

Jan Erik Brühl – I have studied pedagogy and I am particularly interested in removing the social barriers between academical education and vocational training. Both systems should not be separated from each other.