The deputies adopted the amendments to the Higher Education Act on second reading. The leading topic in parliament today was student fees, Nova TV reported.
The deputies decided that the amount of the fee for paid education cannot be lower than 60% of the funds for supporting education in the relevant professional field plus the fee for students on a state order. The current legal text requires that it be 100% of the support. The difference of 40 percent will also have to correspond to the percentage reduction in the amounts, the deputies also decided.
The request of the National Representation of Student Councils was that student fees cannot be increased by more than 20% for the entire 4-year period of study. After the meeting with the Minister of Education, the students announced that they had received agreement in principle from the government. Instead of this proposal, another one was approved - according to it, the fees of students admitted to paid education so far will not be able to increase by more than 20% for the next year, but not for future students.
The changes to the Higher Education Act come into force for the upcoming 2025/2026 academic year.
According to criticism from the opposition, these texts will not solve the problem in the long term, but only for students who have started their studies.
„Next year, if we increase the subsidy sharply again, we will still have to discuss what we will do”, said Nikolay Denkov from PP-DB.
„This would be beneficial for students, but it will not be possible for universities to fix this fee for the entire period”, commented Andrey Chorbanov from ITN. And he added that in other European countries there are no such clauses in the contracts.
“State support is rising, fees for paid education have become extremely high. Therefore, after the students, representatives of the universities and rectors held talks with us, we had to unite around one number”, commented Ivaylo Popov from “Vazrazhdane”.
”We guarantee that in the following years of study, students' fees will not increase by more than 20%”, said Petya Tsankova from the BSP.
Minister of Education Krasimir Valchev commented from the parliament rostrum: “The fact is that we are solving an urgent problem with this bill, and not a permanent and long-term one. Back in the spring, I had a conversation with the rectors of the medical universities and they said that by complying with the Higher Education Act, Bulgarian medical higher education becomes uncompetitive compared to the countries around us. Yes, students need to have predictability, and the law does not provide such. On the other hand, however, if we impose a 20% limit, we risk it not being cost-effective”.