Soup, meatballs in tomato sauce, mashed potatoes, fresh cabbage salad, cheese pie and three slices of bread.
It might not be the typical lunch of a full-time student in the UK, but across the University of Zagreb’s twelve student canteens, it’s likely to be the sort of thing that students are filling their tray with.
You can see why. The normal, “non-student” price of a student meal is €3 – but students in Croatia receive a subsidy, so they pay €0.86, whereas the rest is covered by the state.
Both local student councils and the Croatian national body variously complain about (and lobby on) the nutritional value of what’s on offer, the diversity of options and the quality of what can get scooped onto the plate – but there’s a real value in deciding that an essential component of the educational experience is being able to eat properly and healthily.
An inflation crisis, triggered by the war in Ukraine, has been on here as it has right across Europe. But while the UK seems to have shamefully slipped into normalising student food bank usage, systems like this both ensure that student health is maintained, and help to drive students to spend time together while eating.
It’s easy to argue for more maintenance funding. But we should ask ourselves why it is that so much of what students spend on their “education” in the UK is topping up the investment coffers of catering multinationals. Reducing costs would help those who don’t get maintenance support too.
I hear you Gnocchi
Beef with peas and a Gnocchi attachment is just one of the things we’ve been tucking into on Day 1 of the Wonkhe SUs spring study tour to the Balkans and Austria, where student leaders and SU staff are on a bus tour of students’ unions, guilds, associations, and infrastructure organisations.
One issue with the Croatian student food system is its delivery through what feel quite statist canteens in Student Centres – indeed, one of the issues that the SU at Zagreb had considered using its “veto” rights over was the (re)appointment of the Centre’s Director in a row about quality and range of food.
So it was fascinating to cross the border into Slovenia to see how a similar system of student subsidies is delivered. There the national student organisation is given the job of organising a student-led tender competition from any restaurant that wants to deliver the student meal scheme – with a fixed maximum price, minimums on what has to make up a meal, and standards on nutrition, ethical purchasing and menu diversity.
It’s a system that not only supports independent restaurants across Slovenia’s cities (and, by proxy, the student staff that work in them), it also has a big impact on the multinationals too – so big is the market that McDonalds is involved, and is one of the few countries in the world where you can buy a bowl of soup to go with your Big Mac as a result.
Back in Croatia, food is just one component of the country’s widely understood “student standard” – which also includes subsidies for public transport, student accommodation and a regulated system of student work.
Anyone that wants to employ a student has to use the employment service in one of the student centers – students get a guaranteed wage (aligned with the country’s minimum wage), and then along with tax and the equivalent of national insurance, goes into a fund that has to be spent on student projects.
The annual bidding round is quite something – and the innovation it generates is impressive. Last year in Zagreb the fund supported an “Artificial Intelligence BattleGround”, the 18th annual student bioethics workshop, a medical training program (for non medics), a student-led public speaking school and an environmental awareness festival.
Up in Ljubljana there’s a similar system – although again the national student body has taken the initiative a step further. Študentski Servis not only acts as the broker that helps students find part-time or temporary jobs, it has also developed a system where students can access a comprehensive record of all their student work experience from June 2019 onwards.
It consolidates all engagements across various employers and student services, and students can then utilise the platform to export and print their work experience records, aiding in the compilation of their CVs with verified evidence of their professional development.
Soft power, spread around
Across both countries, we’ve seen very interesting examples of student rights and representation. In all faculties, by law, students get to elect a student council – in effect in most cases this is the course reps of that subject area appointing a coordinating committee to do both voice and project work.
That means that the SUs can always say that they represent all subject areas – in Zagreb, the 38 (!) faculty presidents then join 70 students elected in a block to form the main student council, which meets monthly to discuss student issues.
That kind of body has tended to fall out of fashion in the UK – but its level of participation and coverage is very impressive, and means that any number of initiatives that are decided annually can be carried out by the council’s working groups and committees. This is not a body that is challenged on its representative legitimacy in the way that the UK’s celebrity Sabb teams often are.
Even more interesting is the system of student ombudspeople – by law every faculty and the main central body has to have one, whose role is to promote student rights and intervene on behalf of students who are in dispute with the university.
A lot of that is about soft power within the culture of their faculty, and they don’t always win their cases. But the idea that there are 35 students across the university of Zagreb who have the legal right to act as a student’s shop steward is both reassuring for students and is an amazing thing to have on the CV for those that take up the role (or the role of one of their volunteer assistants in the larger faculties).
Up in Ljubljana, the guardian of student rights at ŠOU serves as a similar figure for students, providing assistance and advocacy in both academic and non-academic matters. They advise students, direct them to appropriate resources, and advocate for the development of student organisations across the university.
Then separately within the university, the Student Ombudsman’s Office is a department that drives principles of equality and inclusion, protection of dignity, and respect of and custodianship over the rights of students. It also acts as an intermediary between the academic environment and broader society, aiming to strengthen the culture of open and respectful attitude towards diversity – and as well as promoting the complaints schemes and intervening on disputes, will produce annual reports that drive policy change.
As universities in England and Wales double down on using insurer’s advice and lawyers in complaints against a backdrop of a distant and “last resort” Office of the Independent Adjudicator (and even worse arrangements in Scotland), it’s a model that really does put the UK to shame when it comes to student rights and protections.
More tomorrow when we’ll be moving North again – to both the Slovenian city of Maribor, and Graz in Austria.
