Education Zug government wants to strengthen employability with scholarships
In future, the Zug government wants to maintain and strengthen the employability of the population with further education scholarships. It expects this to cost around one million francs a year.
17.07.2024, 11:14
SDA
The so-called job market scholarships can be used to support qualifications from industry associations, language or IT certificates, for example, as the Zug government announced on Wednesday. The qualifications are useful on the Swiss job market, but are not federally regulated.
With the scholarships, the government wants to lower the barriers to further education for those in employment, according to the statement. This also applies to people with very few resources. A similar project has been running in the city of Zurich since 2023. The financial impact is therefore still subject to uncertainty, according to the government.
The introduction of labor market scholarships is to take place as part of the total revision of the law and ordinance on education grants. The consultation on this will run until October 2024 and will be submitted to the Cantonal Council for a first reading in January 2025.
More people entitled to scholarships
A change from the so-called points system to the shortfall system is also planned, according to reports. The former will only be used in Zug. The shortfall system increases transparency and at the same time achieves a fairer distribution of education grants.
According to the government, the shortfall system compares a person's available resources, including reasonable personal contributions, with the costs of training. If this results in a shortfall, this leads to entitlements to training grants.
The government also wants to increase the number of people entitled to scholarships. This is to be achieved by increasing the income threshold. This is currently set at CHF 67,000 and is comparatively low. As a result, the number of eligible persons in Zug is the lowest in Switzerland.
