The dreaded decision has been felled: The Nationalrat (big council of the Swiss parliament) decided today to grant ETH a budget growth of 1.7%, but also to change the ETH law and to define an at least three times higher tuition fee for newly incoming foreign students. You can find all details regarding this discussion here. This decision is not unexpected but it still hurts to see how parliament has decided to interfere in ETH’s autonomy and that ETH’s students now have to bear the burden of this and are being used as financial plasters and political statements.
But even if this is a very hard pill to swallow, not all is lost: This decision has yet to be passed through the Ständerat, i.e. the small council of parliament. They will be discussing this topic in the parliamentary session in September. Before that, in the same procedure as done for the Natinalrat, the finance commission and the commission for science, education and culture of the Ständerat will in August pre-discuss the upcoming topics of the Ständerat meeting and then make suggestions to the Ständerat. This means that we still have time to make our case with the members of the commissions and the Ständerat. This will mean lots of trips to Bern for VSETH board members but more importantly for you it means to keep being loud and making ourselves heard from Zurich to Bern that we won’t stand for such decisions being made over our heads. To do this sign our petition (https://fees.vseth.ethz.ch/en) and stay posted on the latest developments via our newsletter, blog and the VSETH Instagram.