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Hello Readers!
I hope you’re doing well and had a chance to recharge over the winter break.
As we start the new semester, I wanted to share with you some updates on the Federal education, research, and innovation policy for 2025-2028. Let’s work together to make the most of what we have and continue to strive for excellence! Unfortunately, due to budget cuts, the ETH Domain will have about CHF 200 million less funding than planned. This will have significant impacts all over ETH, also in teaching. The extent of the impact is unclear at this point, but VSETH will make sure to be part of the discussion. VSETH has sent an open letter to the Federal Council about this issue, and we are going to visit Bern to talk to some members of parliament in the coming weeks. You can find our full position on the topic on our website under Politics “Finances ETH Domain.”
Since the start of the semester, you may have noticed that prices have increased by one franc for most menus and half a franc for the vegetarian options. We understand that this may be frustrating. But we also want to assure you that we were very involved in this decision and have always advocated for low prices for us, students. While we recognize that canteens also feel the pressure from inflation, it is important for us to ensure that this burden is not blindly transferred to students, who, of course, are also affected by inflation. We were able to limit the increases to lower than those initially planned.
We rely on broad feedback to represent the students’ position to ETH, fight for our interests, and achieve student-friendly results. One topic where this broad feedback is particularly important is in how students are feeling at ETH. It is important to hear from everyone.
If we want to successfully demand changes from ETH and its departments, it’s important for us to have good statistics. The first edition of the ‘howsETHgoing’ survey took place 5 years ago, and almost half of the students participated. This widespread participation allowed us to get a good picture of the students’ wellbeing, and the results were very significant for our exchange with ETH. Presented with hard data, ETH took action on many important topics. In which areas have the enacted changes improved the situation, and in which areas is there still a lot more to be done? That is what we want to find out now, five years later. In the middle of April, the second edition of ‘howsETHgoing?’ will start, and we would appreciate everybody taking the time to fill it out, so that we can get as many responses as possible. You can read more about ‘howsETHgoing?’ on page …
Love,
Julia
