Many foreign students never managed to wait for help and were forced to return to their homeland
In early July, another conflict erupted in the US, this time between President Donald Trump and local universities. Trump stated that due to the pandemic, all foreign students whose classes in the upcoming semester continue in a distance format would have to leave the country. Their student visas were planned to be canceled by fall.
As "Russkaya Germaniya" notes, for safety reasons, almost all US universities have been conducting their classes online since the start of the pandemic. Whether online learning will continue for the next six months is still unknown. Only representatives of Harvard University have expressed confidence in this so far.
In support of their students from abroad, Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology challenged the US government's decision in court. A number of states and other universities supported this initiative. On July 15, Trump reversed his decision – foreign students will be able to continue their studies in any case.
In terms of the number of students arriving annually from around the world, Germany, along with the US, ranks among the top. Germany is the most popular non-English-speaking country, which has attracted over 300,000 foreign students with the opportunity to receive high-quality free higher education.
According to the German National Association for Student Affairs (Deutsches Studierendenwerk), more than 66% of all German students work part-time alongside their studies, with the share of foreign students among them being 75%. As a rule, the vast majority work in the catering or retail sectors. These sectors were hit fastest and hardest during the coronavirus crisis.
In a study commissioned by the university group Juso, 35% of surveyed students said they lost their part-time job with the onset of the pandemic. 29% also stated that they suffer at least partially from uncertainty about the future.
A similar problem was faced by Ina Georgieva, a student of journalism and anthropology at the Free University of Berlin, who has been unable to find either a part-time job or an internship in Berlin for six months to complete her education. In early July, Georgieva had to return to her homeland – Bulgaria – because life in Berlin without her own income turned out to be too expensive for the student.
"The pandemic affected me in the sense that I couldn't complete the mandatory internship required to finish my education on time. I had been looking for a place since the beginning of March, and then in the middle of the month the pandemic started. And to all my inquiries I received the same answers: it's impossible to say when I can start the internship, because planning anything during a pandemic is very difficult. On the one hand, I understand them, of course, but on the other hand, it was also very hard for me to live in this uncertainty. In the end, I had to look for an alternative, and since I didn't receive a single positive response by the end of June, I had to return to my home country, Bulgaria. But I continue to look for work and an internship in Berlin," Georgieva said.
Since July 1, all foreign students in Germany can apply for an interest-free loan and receive 650 euros monthly until March 2021. This is the result of months of struggle by the Association of International Students, which also sent an official letter requesting financial support to Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. In addition to monthly payments, all students can get a deferment on paying for rooms in student dormitories belonging to the association.
"I flew to Bulgaria because life in Berlin for students, both Germans and foreigners, can be quite expensive if you don't have your own income. At the same time, expenses remain the same because rent for housing is deducted from the account on the same day as before. I really liked that Germany provided financial aid to students in June. But I think that for most students, unfortunately, it was already too late," said the student from Bulgaria.