Cut back. Suspend. Merge. Close … What about me?

The planned cuts at the MLU pro­ceed con­tin­u­ous­ly. But what about me? Am I affect­ed, too? What hap­pens if my sub­ject gets closed as well? What does “sus­pend­ed” even mean – and where can I find out more? 

Am I affected, too? 

All stu­dents are affect­ed. The MLU has got a sig­nif­i­cant deficit in its bud­get, how­ev­er, state­ments about its size dif­fer a lot. This affects many of the university’s branch­es, some of which are already work­ing at their lim­its. In par­tic­u­lar, the bud­get cuts are affect­ing stu­dents whose sub­jects will be “cut back”, “sus­pend­ed”, “merged”, or “closed”. 

What does “cut” mean? 

“Cut” refers to the university’s mea­sures to save finan­cial resources, e.g. less resources for staff, offered cours­es, pro­fes­sor­ships or uni­ver­si­ty places, in gen­er­al. Con­se­quences of those mea­sures could be, that cer­tain sub­jects are (get­ting) sus­pend­ed, merged or closed. 

What does “suspend” mean? 

If a sub­ject is sus­pend­ed, no more stu­dents will be matric­u­lat­ed from a set point in time. That can be done to facil­i­tate the restruc­tur­ing of a sub­ject, for exam­ple. If you are in a sub­ject which is or will be sus­pend­ed, there like­ly will not be any imme­di­ate con­se­quences for you. How­ev­er, restruc­tura­tion and changes in the range of offered cours­es can affect your stud­ies indirectly. 

What does “merge” mean? 

The main goal of merg­ing sub­jects is to safe per­son­nel cost. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it is hard to give gen­er­al advice on what to do and what to look out for if your course is merged with anoth­er one. The effects for you can be very indi­vid­ual – pay atten­tion to changes of the exam­i­na­tion or study reg­u­la­tions and keep an eye out for assis­tance and infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by your depart­ment or faculty. 

What does “close” mean? 

The uni­ver­si­ty calls this process “can­cel­la­tion” of a sub­ject. As stat­ed in the university’s reg­u­la­tions, MLU guar­an­tees stu­dents who are enrolled at the time the sub­ject is closed a “Study and exam offer in accor­dance with the cur­rent exam­i­na­tion reg­u­la­tions […]” which allows to con­tin­ue one’s stud­ies until the end of their stan­dard peri­od of study plus four semesters. 

Stu­dents who did not have their final exam­i­na­tion at that point are required to sub­mit a request stat­ing rea­sons for a delayed dead­line at the rel­e­vant exam­i­na­tion board until the 31.01. of the year in ques­tion. The exam­i­na­tion board can then decide to grant two addi­tion­al semes­ters and com­pile an indi­vid­ual study plan. 

Where can I get information and help? 

The Student Advisory Service

The Stu­dent Advi­so­ry Ser­vice offers var­i­ous ways of inter­ac­tion for its advis­ing appoint­ments, cur­rent­ly includ­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty to attend an advis­ing appoint­ment via web con­fer­ence. Please look for the cur­rent options before­hand on the web­site of the Stu­dent Advi­so­ry Ser­vice — you can use the QR code shown here for this pur­pose. Please be sure to fol­low the cur­rent Covid-19 reg­u­la­tions. 

• Adress: Studieren­den-Ser­vice-Cen­ter, Uni­ver­sität­splatz 11, Löwenge­bäude, 06108 Halle (Saale) 
• Tele­phone: 0345/55213 – 08; – 22; – 27; – 06 
• E‑Mail: ssc [at] uni [dot] halle [dot] de 

Open office houers:

• Mon­tag: 13:00 bis 16:00 Uhr 
• Dien­stag: 10:00 bis 12:00 Uhr; 13:00 bis 17:00 Uhr 
• Mittwoch: 10:00 bis 11:00 Uhr 
• Don­ner­stag: 10:00 bis 12:00 Uhr; 13:00 bis 16:00 Uhr 

The StuRa (Studierendenrat, students council)

The Stu­dent Advi­so­ry Ser­vice offers var­i­ous ways of inter­ac­tion for its advis­ing appoint­ments, cur­rent­ly includ­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty to attend an advis­ing appoint­ment via web con­fer­ence. Please look for the cur­rent options before­hand on the web­site of the Stu­dent Advi­so­ry Ser­vice — you can use the QR code shown here for this pur­pose. Please be sure to fol­low the cur­rent Covid-19 reg­u­la­tions. 

• Adress: Studieren­den­rat der Mar­tin-Luther-Uni­ver­sität Halle-Wit­ten­berg, Uni­ver­sität­splatz 7,  06108 Halle (Saale) 
• Tele­phone: 0345/5521411 
• E‑Mail: buero [at] stu­ra [dot] uni-halle [dot] de 

The Psychosoziale Beratungsstelle des Studentenwerks (psychosocial advisory service of the student service)

New per­son­al chal­lenges and prob­lems can sur­face in the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion and the con­se­quences aris­ing from it, whether in stud­ies or in pri­vate life. Here, a coun­sel­ing ses­sion may be help­ful. The stu­dent ser­vice offers coun­sel­ing ser­vices at sev­er­al loca­tions (Halle, Köthen, Merse­burg, Bern­burg and Dessau). Cur­rent­ly, both tele­phone and per­son­al con­sul­ta­tions (in com­pli­ance with hygiene reg­u­la­tions) are offered. The range and fre­quen­cy of ser­vices may vary depend­ing on the coun­sel­ing loca­tion. Please vis­it the web­site of the stu­dent ser­vice for infor­ma­tion about cur­rent offers, appoint­ments, and fur­ther infor­ma­tion – you can use the QR code shown here. Please be sure to fol­low the cur­rent Covid-19 reg­u­la­tions – please nev­er vis­it the coun­sel­ing cen­ter in case of symp­toms of ill­ness or feel­ing unwell, but use the pos­si­bil­i­ties for remote coun­sel­ing.  

Trans­la­tion: Ste­fan Kranz