Financial aid will be discontinued for some students due to insufficient academic progress

Kela monitors students’ academic progress annually. Through the monitoring, Kela checks whether the eligibility criteria for financial aid are met, i.e., whether students have earned enough credits during the academic year.

This autumn, Kela monitored the academic progress of some 265,000 students. Based on the monitoring results, Kela sent a request for further information to about 14,600 students in higher education and about 5,600 students in upper secondary education.

Student financial aid will be discontinued for only 1% of the students whose progress was monitored this autumn. In total, financial aid will be discontinued for about 3,000 students. About 2,000 of them are in higher education and about 1,000 are in upper secondary education.

Student financial aid will be discontinued for students who have not earned enough credits and who have not given an acceptable reason for making slower progress. Acceptable reasons include, for instance, illness or some other difficult life situation.

Some students who were sent a request for further information did not reply. If the financial aid payments are discontinued because the student forgot to reply to a request for further information, the student can request a review of the decision to discontinue payment.

According to Anne Jääskeläinen, a financial aid coordinator at Kela, discontinuing or recovering financial aid are the final steps that Kela will take to remind students of the need to make progress with their studies. “Most students make good progress. Only a small percentage of students lose their financial aid because they cannot show a good reason for making slower progress”, she says.

Most of the students affected by the decision to discontinue financial aid will have their payments stopped as from January 2025. If payments are discontinued as of some other date, that information will be included in the decision to discontinue payment.

Kela only rarely recovers financial aid as a result of the monitoring of study progress. Financial aid is only recovered if it is discovered for example that the student has completed exceptionally few credits and has never intended to study.

Students can file a new application for financial aid after the aid has been discontinued

If student financial aid has been discontinued due to lack of progress in the studies, the student may nevertheless receive student financial aid again later on. Students can requalify for financial aid after the discontinuation of financial aid payments on condition that they subsequently earn at least the minimum number of credits required. The decision to discontinue payment includes more specific information on the number of credits required. The decision also includes information on the other forms of support that the student can apply for in place of student financial aid.

How to maintain eligibility for financial aid

If a student has an acceptable reason for making slower progress with their studies, the best way to maintain eligibility for financial aid is to reply to the request for further information from Kela. Jääskeläinen recommends students to set aside some time in their busy lives to look into their situation with Kela.

“It's important that students take the time to reply to a request for further information so as to avoid having their financial aid payments stopped”, she says. Higher education students can also cancel or return financial aid voluntarily before autumn, when Kela monitors their study progress. “It's best to contact us if something is unclear. That way we can look for the best solution together”, Jääskeläinen says.

Additional information

• Study progress
• Press release 30 September 2024: Kela has sent a request for further information on study progress to xxx students
• Kela on Instagram (instagram.com)