The Social Services Department is committed to the social needs of the student body. It is the contact point for all matters of social and financial security and works in a biased manner in favour of the students. We want to help you to cope better with the adversities that you are all too often exposed to. Our goal is to improve the social conditions of the students and to inform you about current problems and changes.
A fundamental critique of socio-political issues of relevance to higher education policy is necessary in order to continue to vehemently oppose the introduction of tuition fees, to stand up for barrier-free access and the social opening of the universities in Berlin. We see ourselves as the antithesis of often socially hostile principles such as pressure to perform, competition and elite.
In practice, our work focuses on the organisation and networking of the extensive range of advice offered by the AStA, which is intended to help you with questions of financing your studies (e.g. BAföG or benefits according to the SGB), but also with problems of unequal treatment or exclusion in everyday university life. In addition, the Social Services Department, in cooperation with the Department of Higher Education Policy, the Public Relations Department or the Department of Teaching and Studies, regularly carries out press and public relations work on university-related socio-politically relevant topics and, if necessary, lobbies directly with the academic self-administration of the FU to identify and stop anti-social plans or procedures at the university.
In addition, the Social Department organises events from time to time or publishes publications and analyses on various social policy issues.
- You can find helpful tips for living and studying in Berlin in our social reader
- The office hours of all the counselling services offered by the AStA are constantly changing. The current ones, including social counselling, BAföG counselling and counselling for disabled and chronically ill students, can be found under the menu "Service for Individuals."
- For questions and suggestions you can reach us at sozialreferat (at) astafu.de! (For questions about BAföG matters please contact BAföG counselling: bafoegberatung (at) astafu.de)
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There you will find all current information, events and articles.
Gimme the good life!!
...or why people shouldn't surrender to "practical constraints".
We live in a world in which in the most diverse places in the most diverse contexts, the most diverse people raise constraints to be beaten arguments. Thus, constraints (or what is presented as such) threaten to dominate more and more content in our society. What this leads to can currently be excellently understood at the university - less in the context of critical and alternative teaching content, however, but rather in the "democratic" self-administration of the "Freie" University itself.
The fact that students, especially at the FU, have for years repeatedly expressed themselves through protests is probably the clearest expression of the fact that the existing, feudal-looking system of estates in the academic bodies of the universities is outdated. Thus, professors have an absolute majority in all of the FU's committees that are actually authorized to make decisions. A fact that makes it difficult for the other three status groups - students, academic and other staff members - to articulate their opinions and needs in an open and content-oriented debate. There is no balance between the positions and self-interests of the status groups. Instead, there is a clear hierarchy, which becomes all the more repulsive the more it is reflected in the self-image of the professorial status. Structural hierarchies become specific hierarchies in the committees, which then, among other things, result in an ignorant basic attitude of the professorial university management or the deaneries towards student committees, projects and demands. A vicious circle that is culminating more and more in a student-hostile overall atmosphere at the FU. The students as customers - no less, but above all no more.
In this context, it is interesting to note that a different, student-friendly study environment is not so far away, as is often stated. It is often forgotten that just a few years ago, studying was much more self-determined. In addition, the current situation at the universities is permanently presented as a further development, while the statement that it corresponds - to a not inconsiderable extent - to a regression is smiled at.
It is by no means primarily a question of money in the design of higher education. If education were primarily a matter of economic efficiency, it would be a mark of poverty, indeed a declaration of bankruptcy for any education system with a claim to freedom and knowledge. At present, however, higher education, at least at the FU, is increasingly becoming a question of money - not always directly, but mostly indirectly, since the FU, like few other universities in Germany, is constantly emulating the competitive and elitist thinking of the prophets of a market-based education system. The FU thus fuels a division of the entire higher education landscape into winners and losers, which affects not only universities but also individual students at all universities.
The university management is happy to point out that only the political responses of the higher levels are to be implemented by the universities. In this context, not only financial constraints are used as justification, but also legal and administrative arguments. The contents are completely pushed into the background, thus concealing the fact that these are often quite deliberate political decisions made by the presidency or even the deaneries.
For example, there is not much to be said against designing study conditions in such a way that mechanisms for compensating for disadvantages become superfluous, since no one is structurally disadvantaged any more. Should this not be the goal? The fact that this is not being done and that study conditions are instead to be made increasingly restrictive, as in the current example of the framework study and examination regulations, is primarily due to the fact that an artificial competitive situation is deliberately being created, in which higher education is to be made more efficient in terms of its economic effects. What is forgotten here is that free education and creative, self-determined studies do not result from setting as narrow a framework as possible for the creation of an artificial "elite", but from freedom and individual development opportunities. This is exactly what WE demand - no more and no less.