Hung out to dry: Students to face Vienna expenses with meager support

Written by Andy Chen, March 2019

The Stipend Situation

Members of the university com­munity at this point are familiar with the political circumstances that spurred CEU to reduce operations in Budapest, where it has been located for over two decades. For months since the university’s self-imposed December 1 deadline, however, the state of what has been dubbed the “Vienna move” has been a constant source of anxiety and confusion for the CEU community.

Among continuing students, espe­cially those who will be compelled to spend part of their next year or years in Vienna, the most pressing appre­hensions have concerned financial realities. The average cost of rent in Vienna, one of the richest cities in the world, is a little under two times what students pay in Budapest; grocery prices and transportation expenses increase about 50% to 70% in Vienna. For students who have budgeted their savings with the expectation that their expenditures over a 2-year MA or PhD program would reflect living costs in Budapest, many are looking toward the university for support to close this financial gap.

The university’s response, however, has been less than ideal. In mid-Jan­uary, stipend increases were pub­lished on the university website: PhD students (excluding Economics and Business Administration students), who receive approximately €760/mo in Budapest, were offered an initial 55% increase in their aid, which was adjusted in late February to stipends of €1,300/mo in Vienna; Master’s stu­dents with scholarships were offered a 50% increase in their stipends, with a partial stipend increase from €160 to €240 and a full stipend increase from €300 to €470. With no announcement from the university administration, however, less than a third of the stu­dents I spoke to were aware that these numbers had already been published online.

Despite the stipend adjustment, PhD students remain below minimum wage in Austria, where the government has announced aims to bring its minimum wages across all industries to €1,500 by 2020. The average gross aid for PhD students in Viewnna, largely distribut­ed as a salary, is €2,000; with the pro­posed stipend increase, CEU PhD stu­dents would still be nearly €500 short of the least aid offered by Viennese in­stitutions. Master’s students’ stipends would be even less accommodating– at an €80 to €170 increase per head, those students without a housing offer will also compete for space in Vienna with fewer resources.

“Since I already receive only half a stipend, which already doesn’t cover my expenditures in Budapest, in Vien­na the monthly stipend I get will only be enough to survive for two weeks,” says O., a first-year Medieval Studies MA student, who doesn’t receive a housing allowance. “My biggest fear is that I will need to take out a loan to be able to finish my studies– or the the worst case scenario, dropping out of the program, if I need to go to Vienna without being provided with enough money to cover the difference.”

Some students have already taken out loans to afford living in Budapest. “Currently, if I didn’t have the [U.S.] federal loan I took out to cover month­ly rent and food expenses, I would not even make it in Budapest,” admits Sam, a first-year History MA student with a partial stipend. “And Vienna is noticeably more expensive than Buda­pest in all respects.”

Housing Hurdles

One of the murkiest issues specifi­cally concerning housing in Vien­na for CEU students is the duration of stay. Many programs are currently considering the feasibility of conduct­ing parts of Master’s programs at the Vienna campus, which will present significant visa issues for third-country students as well as considerable anxi­ety over securing affordable tempo­rary housing. Although Vienna is a city with a much more extensive student housing industry than Budapest, rent­al periods in this market are pinned to the academic year and are generally inflexible.

Housing at a third-party dormitory has was secured by the university in early February for those Master’s students who receive housing as part of their financial aid packages (around 30%, according to CEU’s facts and figures). Whether or not students who received a housing offer, but turned it down, will have the option to use the Vien­na dormitory, is also unclear. Master’s students in the International Relations department in particular, who will be required to spend their Fall 2019 term in Vienna, have already been promised free transportation and temporary housing. There’s no news, however, on what the university expects students to do with their current housing, and no guarantees for when they return to Budapest in the winter.

C., a Hungarian first-year MA student in International Relations, expressed concern with some of her peers over the fairness of the financial support. “We’re supposed to get free accom­modation and transportation [in Vi­enna],” she tells me, “but this doesn’t make a difference for those who have to keep a flat in Budapest.”

For students without a housing pack­age seeking places to live, the uni­versity has promised to help with the process, but it has also expressed that it expects students– including PhD students– to find shared housing to defray expenses. Students have al­ready voiced their dissatisfaction with the university’s housing search tools in Budapest, and there is no guarantee similar tools will help students secure housing in Vienna that matches their reduced budgets. Furthermore, many PhD students are at stages in their lives where having housemates rep­resents desperate measures.

“I can’t give up that privacy,“ says A., a PhD student in Business Administra­tion, in response to the idea of shared housing. Adrien, a PhD student in Gender Studies, agrees– “We’re not 20 year-olds who don’t mind sharing run-down flats with no security for tomorrow,” he says. Adrien doesn’t mind personally, but his peers are coming from a variety of different sit­uations. “Some of us have families, debts. I know it’s difficult to find just a room in Vienna for less than €450, which makes CEU’s offer of €1,180 rather ridiculous.”

Students have noted that the univer­sity’s online estimates for housing costs in Budapest, and consequently stipend calculations, have consistent­ly failed to reflect recent increases in housing prices throughout the city, and that there is no official mecha­nism for scaling financial aid to rising costs in the host city. Likewise, the information provided on the CEU Cost­of-Living Orientation page suggests a brow-raisingly unrealistic average rent of €400/mo in Vienna– about €50-100 less than students’ average monthly rent for one-bedroom flats in Buda­pest. PhD students, who formed a working group to petition the adminis­tration for fairer stipends, produced a policy brief revealing that overall, 45% of PhD students spent more than half of their stipends on rent and utilities. According to general best practices, no more than 30% of income should be spent on housing.

None of these negotiations take into account the increased financial burden for self-funding students. One of the major gaps in information distributed by the administration so far has been the state of institutional support for students who are entirely self-funded, students with tuition waivers, and stu­dents like O. and Sam with stipends and no housing. Furthermore, no guarantees have been made for Hun­garian students from the Budapest metropolitan area, who have been expected up to this point to procure their own housing, often by staying with parents.

“Since I don’t receive a stipend from CEU right now, I would probably not be applicable for the increased sti­pend,” says Piret, a first-year Gender Studies MA student who receives a partial tuition waiver. “I could defi­nitely not afford to live in Vienna by my own means. It would be of great help if the administration would rearrange our packages so that the enrolled stu­dents who do not receive a stipend at the moment, but have to deal with Vienna, could also get aid from the school.”

D., a Hungarian first-year MA student in International Relations, remains hopeful. “I only receive a tuition waiv­er,” she tells me. As an IR student, the promise of housing in Vienna has alle­viated some of her anxieties. “I spend the student loans that I receive imme­diately on fees. But with free housing, I think it will be OK.”

The administration’s general re­sponse to funding increase de­mands has been to cite limited funds. Provost Matei Liviu, who has become the students’ point of contact con­cerning financial issues, disclosed in a meeting with PhD students that tu­ition earnings had dropped almost by half since the 2016-17 school year. He voiced needs to reduce spending and re-capitalise university programs. “We’re one of the few universities that give stipends [at all],” he said, in response to calls for increased aid. He also expressed that PhD funding would not follow general Viennese in­stitutional practice, which distributes funding as salaries. “PhD students are not researchers,” he stressed, “but students.” Despite consistent pres­sure from students, the university has only adjusted PhD stipends by €100.

Tuition earnings, however, only ac­count for 2% of the university’s ex­penses. The rest is covered by en­dowments, upon which the university relies significantly. So far, no concrete information has been released on the exact distribution of the university’s funds to justify low stipend adjust­ments. The general sentiment among students is that the administration believes that MA students should be grateful for receiving any aid at all. Further fanning the flames, rumours of plans to eventually do away with MA stipends began to circulate earlier in the month.

Adrien, among others, has anticipated this more corporate line of reasoning from university management. “I’m worried that only initial costs will be covered, and that the next step will be a brutal austerity cure and shameless marketization,” says Adrien. “I think the university has made a number of foolish financial decisions– including the lavish new N15 building and the move to Central Europe’s most expen­sive city– and now they want the cost to be borne by the students.”

The choice of Vienna as CEU’s new home, coupled with reluctance from the administration to increase stu­dent funding, has also sparked con­cerns that CEU in the long-term will no longer be dedicated to providing accessible education to its historical Eastern European and global-south demographics. The “2025” adminis­trative committee, set up as part of the move to establish CEU’s future di­rection, has expressed its dedication to maintaining a diverse student body, but some students are not convinced.

“We’re definitely moving towards a neoliberal model, where CEU will try to attract a richer, fee-paying clientele by offering more marketable skills,” Adrien tells me. He, and many other students I spoke to, noted the univer­sity’s slow shift away from its former social and political mission.

With buildings rented and contracts signed in Vienna, there is no going back; however, CEU risks going from one of the most prestigious and di­verse universities in Central Europe to one of many other foreign private uni­versities modelled on corporate-style American colleges. As Provost Liviu noted, CEU’s Master’s stipend provi­sion, which makes it possible for tal­ented students to attend from all over the world, does indeed make the uni­versity stand out. Without reasonable increases in student financial support going forward though, and with Mas­ter’s scholarships potentially on the chopping block, it’s hard to see the in­stitution retaining its unique character.

Adrien, on the other hand, offers a different solution to the problem. “It might sound brutal, but I don’t think that this university should survive at any cost,” he muses. “If there is no model ensuring its survival without unethical investment, corporate en­croachment, or aggressive commodifi­cation, then what’s the point? Perhaps we should spend what the endowment has and close this down.”