And a some chocolate cake as well

This is not about my latest baking achievement.

Yesterday I got an email from the authorities here informing us of a new governmental policy.

From now on, ALL the 'compulsory' course materials must be on Universities' intranet, and those students receiving a governmental grant for studying, the University must print all these materials for free upon request.

The purpose is to democratize access to higher education, and, basically, to provide free education.

This really poses a lot of questions...

-Basic education has been 'free' of in this country for a long time. Yet every year, newspapers make headlines with the hundreds of € spent by families on kids getting back to school (some of which is probably useless branded stuff, but still). Free education is a myth. That being said, I do believe it is important to make sure that people from any income group can access education at any level.

-Still, this, from the pedagogical point of view, and from the point of view of a lecturer, has a number of implications. I use a textbook (rather nice and quite reasonnably priced, beside the fact that it can be bought/sold second hand) - does that mean I can't use that as a 'compulsory' course material? Does that mean that instead of this nice textbook, I need to write a shitty syllabus for them to study from?

-Why is the intranet the only canal mentionned? What happened to libraries? (for which the government also spends money, incidentally)

This comes as yet another obligation for lecturers to fulfill. I wonder if whoever came up with this has any idea of the type of course materials that are currently used.

Did I mention this trimester I need to lecture in a room that is litterally 2 meters from a big construction site? So far I haven't been able to get another room. They really want us to fucking podcast our lectures (not on my mind...)