At the beginning of the summer semester next Monday, universities should have the opportunity to request a negative corona test for participation in courses or exams. A corresponding regulation is to be decided retrospectively in the planned amendment to the University Act (UG). This will probably be implemented by the universities after the Easter break at the beginning of April.
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“Big lectures will not end,” said Education Minister Heinz Faßmann (ÖVP) at a press conference on Friday. This is less due to lecture halls that are too small than to limited entrances and exits. However, laboratory exercises, seminars, blocked courses or final exams could take place in face-to-face form. Larger face-to-face exams, such as those in law, could become possible again, according to the President of the University Conference (uniko), Sabine Seidler.
Individual universities had already announced something similar at the beginning of the week. Implementation should now be made easier with the option of entry testing. Technically, this happens through the anchoring in the currently planned amendment to the basement, which, however, still has to be passed by the National Council. For the implementation of the test strategies, the universities receive one million euros from the ministry, for which they can use the 20 million euros that were reallocated from the university's funding to combat the consequences of the pandemic. “And if we need more money, we will provide more for it,” said Fassmann. The universities of applied sciences also received financial support.
For Seidler, however, there are still financing questions: You cannot understand why the universities have been excluded from the company testing law. This enables funding of ten euros per test.
The uniko president announced that when opening face-to-face events, particular attention would be paid to students in their first year of study. “There are new students who have not yet seen their university from the inside,” said the chairwoman of the Austrian Students' Union (ÖH), Sabine Hanger.
Both Seidler and Faßmann emphasized the importance of social exchange and discourse at universities: “University education is not a school for young adults,” said Seidler.
According to a survey of around 500 students carried out from February 18 to 24, around 60 percent said they were very or rather stressed by the pandemic in everyday university life – almost 40 percent, on the other hand, felt little or no stress. Conversely, around 60 percent also rated the switch to distance learning as very good or fairly good.
By far the greatest change is the restricted social life. “You can be grateful to have a roof over your head and food in the refrigerator, and yet it can be stressful just to watch university life on the screen,” says Hanger. In response to the greater psychological stress, Faßmann announced an increase in the number of positions in the psychological student counseling service by around 15 full-time equivalents or 40 percent.
Faßmann's initiative comes too late for the FPÖ: the summer semester will start next Monday and only today will the minister present a kind of timetable for the universities, criticized science spokesman Martin Graf. His NEOS counterpart Martina Künsberg Sarre called for the “test paragraph” to be implemented quickly. The Greens and Alternative Students (GRAS) demand that the organization of the tests is not left to the students, but is regulated locally at the universities. Student union list representative Desmond Grossmann urged the ÖH top in a broadcast “not to cower behind the government, as it sometimes seems”.
