Student fees - studying in Europe. Its cheaper - but where can you find information?

jbirch

Something that is often omitted when looking at student funding. There is an alternative.

When my daughter went to university two years ago we never thought beyond the UK - indeed the idea of going to Scotland seemed remote and exotic. However, for her third year she was given the chance to spend a year at the University of Utrecht on an exchange as part of the Erasmus scheme.

She has been blown away by the quality of the experience she is having. All of the teaching is in English, and she is on a campus where everything is in English. Instead of 100+ students in a lecture, her biggest class is 28 - and in most cases its just over half that. She has much more access to university staff. All in all her only regret seems to be that she is only in Utrecht for one year, instead of three. What is more Utrecht is ranked 80th in the world. Her university in England - though in the Times top 10 for the UK - has a world ranking just past 200. And all this for a £1500 annual tuition fee (and she is not even paying that, due to the Eramsus scheme)

With my son looking at university in three years time, the possibility of Utrecht - or another university like it - is one we would like to look into.

But where do we start? Finding out and applying for places at UK universities is easy - schools have loads of information - and finding out about funding is also easy, if sobering. But how do yo find out about European universities - especially those that teach in English?

And then what about grants and loans? UK grants and loans do not apply - but under EU law are not UK students treated like "home" students in other EU countries? If that is so, what is available? How do you apply? There seems to be a real "gap in the market" here for a "Go Compare" for EU university funding and courses, which is odd as - even before you factor in the amazing experience of studying with people from across the world in somewhere like Utrecht or Copenhagen (no fees at all!) - the savings could run into tens of thousands of pounds.

Any idea where we could start?

(Incidentally, most of these low costs also apply to masters degrees as well - and even more of these are in English. You can do a masters in Netherlands for £1500, and in Denmark (Copenhagen) for nothing!)

Oh - and for anyone with concerns about their children left alone in a foreign country, the door-to-door journey to get to my daughter's UK university takes us 5 hours. Her second choice university in Edinburgh would have taken 8 hours. Door to door, Utrecht is 7 hours. And the journey cost if rather lower as - once you are in Europe - fuel is way cheaper!

DollyDabbler

I think Panorama covered this a few weeks ago using Groningen as an example, but we have struggled to find a lot of information. I think you need the name of the different universities and then look at their websites individually.

I did find this though, which is encouraging:

MAASTRICHT UNIVERSITY in the Netherlands is seeking to become the first foreign university to be admitted into the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas), the system used for handling applications and offers of places for degree courses for all UK universities. A spokesman for Maastricht University – which doubled its intake of UK undergraduate students entering its Englishmedium degree courses for academic year 2009/10 – said the university was ‘very disappointed’ to be told by Ucas that it can’t be accepted into the system as it's not a UK institution. Maastricht is now ‘continuing negotiations with Ucas’, a process that could end in legal action being taken against Ucas under European competition law.

melancholly

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3378700

this thread may help - it's not as transparent as it could be and i wouldn't be surprised if the dutch did try to make this more difficult if hoards of british students head over there! i'd make sure that the choice isn't based with cost as the main deciding factor..... at the moment, uk universities have very few upfront costs thanks to the loans system. even if fees abroad are cheaper, access to loans won't be there so the money needs to be found at the time (fees and accommodation plus other living costs) - for many people that will be prohibitive. there are many excellent universities in holland though but it's worth checking all the details - for example in some courses it can be important to have the degree accredited by the relevant professional body, which won't happen for foreign degrees. get all the info about it and then make the choice (or perhaps, it should really be your son making the decision once you've helped him find the info?) - it could be a great outcome (and for many people it is), but equally, it's important to recognise the whole picture, downsides included!

(although i think it's fairly easy to have the experience of studying with people from across the world in most british unis!)

Voyager2002

For others reading this thread: do remember that the excellent Dutch universities are not representative of universities across the whole of Europe. The British universities and the student experience that they provide are far better than what is available in many European countries. For example, the ordinary French universities (as opposed to the elite institutes) are free, but have very high student/staff ratios and offer minimal contact with teaching staff.

mountainofdebt

I would also add that whilst the lectures may be in english, can you imagine living in a place where you couldn't speak the language?

The_One_Who

Quite a lot about this on BBC Breakfast this morning.

Unfortunately it hasn't been reported very well, or at least not very balanced. All they really said was that a lot of English students are heading to the Netherlands for university and that there is a different language and culture to deal with. Not really anything to do with the funding aspects (other than you can get a grant if you work 32 hours a week, I think) or the actual living issues such as dealing with landlords, utility companies, governments in a country where you don't speak the language or know the laws or general practices.

I went to university to learn from some of the best academics in my subject. European universities just aren't on the same level as UK ones for my course. This sort of thing isn't really being looked at by most either.

2sides2everystory

I think that UCAS/Maastricht spat just shows what a stitch up and closed shop the UK university £9,000 a year bandwagon has become. They are not attempting to promote competition at all. Isn't it a cartel to suck out as many £9K fees as possible direct from the government/SLC coffers before anyone realises that the money has not gone into education but into greedy pockets (as usual)?

The_One_Who wrote:

European universities just aren't on the same level as UK ones for my course.

What sort of course would that be? Are you sure we are not guilty of still banging our drum a little bit too much on this morally and financially bankrupt little island of ours?

The_One_Who

2sides2everystory wrote: »

What sort of course would that be? Are you sure we are not guilty of still banging our drum a little bit too much on this morally and financially bankrupt little island of ours?

No. Throughout my four years of university I never once came across an article written by anyone from a European university (not through lack of trying, either!) that was to do with my areas of interest. Of course, for some courses going abroad could be greatly beneficial, but there are still the other issues to take in to account.

melancholly

2sides2everystory wrote: »

What sort of course would that be? Are you sure we are not guilty of still banging our drum a little bit too much on this morally and financially bankrupt little island of ours?

genuinely, HE is something the UK has been outstanding out. if you look at the world uni rankings, we do a lot better than anyone apart from the US. i make it 14 in the world top 100, whereas Germany and France have three and the Netherlands none.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2010-2011/top-200.html

have a look if you want - the 2011 rankings are due out in October.

i know you have strong opinions on uni funding - that's a given and i largely understand them, even if i do disagree on your conclusions, but the actual quality of uk universities is separate to that (albeit at risk right now!). it's always important to consider everything you can about choosing a uni, wherever you choose to go. reputation is one part of that and on the whole, the UK HE system is one of the best in the world.

The_One_Who wrote: »

No. Throughout my four years of university I never once came across an article written by anyone from a European university (not through lack of trying, either!) that was to do with my areas of interest. Of course, for some courses going abroad could be greatly beneficial, but there are still the other issues to take in to account.

yeah - and for me there were lots of papers from dutch, german and french groups that were relevant. but i still would have wanted a degree accredited by a UK professional body, so europe would have been a bad choice for me.

2sides2everystory

I think we (as usual) are in danger of being a bit parochial. Are Audi and Mercedes design teams and production engineers at their main motorwerks educated at UK or US universities? Largely not I think. We simply have a tiny concentration of engineers out Oxfordshire way mostly working on the glamour part in F1 racing.

Do we think that Siemens design teams and production engineers who design and everything from GPS chips to high speed trains were educated at UK or US universities?

Do we think that the most successful renewable energy design teams and production engineers were educated at UK or US universities. I think not.

Weapons research - yeah we still do that and waste billions on it. Messing around with bits and pieces we want to get stuck on a rocket in Baikonur and shot up into orbit ... yeah we still muck about with such stuff like we are still belong to the 'in' club on what goes up.

Mobile phones and chips? Ah yes ... a tiny Cambridge design team hit the big time in the 80s with RISC and have been living off it ever since ...

Oh yeah stem cell research and genetics ... how much do we ordinary folk really benefit from that? How long actually before we ordinary folk cannot afford life insurance because we have the "fat gene" and actuaries decide we need to pay more for that? And maybe we don't even have to be fat ...

Oh and let's not forget Business schools and financial services . Second thoughts, let's do forget them.

Northern Europe does things differently. Let us compare ourselves to stuff they do well, not the US of A whose current debt interest is costing them fifty cents on every dollar and who are down the pan in oh so many ways.

When I started work for real on a graduate fast track entry course into a UK blue chip years and years ago, on the first residential course we were introducing ourselves and I always remember there was an Oxford graduate there who said he had a PhD in Snake Energetics ! You won't find too many papers in Europe on that either ! I was in a university hall of residence the other day and the open day rep did mention that pets were not allowed and that a loose snake caused a huge problem for a day last term. We do manufacture some strange people in the UK, don't we? (I claim no exemptions :rotfl: )

melancholly

2sides2everystory wrote: »

Northern Europe does things differently. Let us compare ourselves to stuff they do well, not the US of A whose current debt interest is costing them fifty cents on every dollar and who are down the pan in oh so many ways.

well northern european universities are in the list too.... and we do better than them.... it's starting to sound like you really just want to say that uk HE is awful and you're looking for any excuse to attack it, regardless of the actual facts in front of you.....

i honestly can't quite take anyone seriously who thinks genetics is a pointless area to research. or who says that all our business schools are useless when the London Business School is ranked best in the world. (although to be fair, in the FT rankings Spainish unis do arguably better than British ones, but since they're not 'northern european' i guess that is another fact you'll ignore as it doesn't fit your view?)