The Organization “Young Barristers”, taking into consideration high public interest, appeals to the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, for the implementation of complex activities on the issue of suspension of the student's status, which implies the creation of a comprehensive database, where higher and professional education institutuions of Georgia will place, at the beginning of each semester, the number of students who suspended student's status in their instituions and indicate the reason for the suspension.
The organization offers the ministry to establish new approaches and criteria, when the state take commitment to help to the students who suspended status to continue their studies. However, it should not be universal in nature, but intended only for those students who really need support from the state to cover the tuition fees and despite the good academic performance could not afford to pay.
According to the statement of lawyer of the “Young Barristers” – Nino Isakadze, from October 1, 2012 to September 30, 2014, based on the data of 62 higher education institutions of Georgia, there are 42.395 thousand students who suspended student’s status at least once during this period and according to the statistics of 16 vocational education institutions, this number is 192 students.
The organization addressed to the Ministry On 30 September 2014 and requested the following information: from October 1, 2012 to September 30, 2014, how many students were suspended student status in higher educational institutions and vocational schools of Georgia; what are the reasons and grounds for the suspension of student status and what are the preventive measures applied by the ministry to help people with a suspended student status. Despite provided statistics from the Ministry, information about what has been the reasons of suspension of the student's status, remained unknown. An official letter only deals with the definition of the norm how the situation of the suspension of tudent’s status is happening.
The “Young Barristers” on 17 October 2014, attended the meeting with the Minister, where the following definition was made that at present, due to financial debt 11 000 students have been suspended student’s status. Among them are students who have obtained a 100% grant and a reason they still have indicated financial debt. There are students who have expired 100% of the grant period (4 years), do not receive the appropriate credits and have to take additional semester. Also, among the 11000 students who suspended student’s status, can be found a large proportion of students with debt of 10, 20, 30 and 100Gel, who in some cases, deliberately suspended the student's status. It should be noted that in the 2014-2015 school year, only 137 students were suspended status.
According to the evaluation of the “Young Barristers”, in 2012, 3543 students restored student’s status, in 2013 – 10329 and based on te condision of on 21 October 2014, to about 10 000 students, with this approach about 18.558 students still have suspended student’s status. With this data, it remains unclear how many students are in a social situation that cannot restore student’s status because of lack of financies. Therefore, the government should work seriously in order to produce meaningful statistics and make the differentiation of the particular circumstances of the status suspension, to make solution to the problems clear and pragmatic.
The “Young Barristers” publishes the statistics of the 10 higher education institutions, how many students suspended student’s status at least once during the period of October 1, 2012 to September 30, 2014:
- Tbiliss State University - 8075;
- Georgian Technical University - 5472;
- Ilia State University - 5039;
- Kutaisi Akaki Tsereteli State University - 4872;
- Georgian National University (SEU) – 2366;
- The University of Georgia - 1627;
- Tbilisi State Medical University - 1194;
- Caucasus International University - 1095;
- Caucasus University - 1108;
- Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University - 919.
