What's better - paying to study or being paid to study?

One of the commonest questions people in Slovenia ask me in relation to studying abroad is money and funding. Aren't there tuition fees to be paid? And how much are there? When I reply that they’re £9520, they’re all shocked. How can you afford this? And, is it really worth it? Considering it is Oxford, yes it is, but for many other universities it probably would not be. The difference between Slovenia and the UK is not only in the tuition fee, but in the entire system including both tuition and maintenance loans that enable young people (and their families) to study. Which system, the Slovene or the British, is better, also in terms of equal opportunities?

As already mentioned, all the universities in the UK have tuition fees, mostly of £9250. Everyone can take a fee loan for the entire sum, and after you finish your studies and get a job, you start paying it off, 9% of what you earn above £21,000 per year, plus interest rates. In Slovenia, the universities are completely for free, although you might have to pay like 50 to 100 € for enrolment at the beginning. You also have a chance to fail a year, switch a course or take another year for the thesis without having to pay anything. The exams can be retaken a few times for free. All the money for universities comes from taxes from the state.

When it comes to living costs, in the UK you can also get a maintenance loan, the sum of which depends on the location of your university (London/outside London), your degree and your family income. With a minimum UK salary and living outside London, one is supposed to get £8700 per year. The repayment of this loan works in the same way as for the tuition loan. Both loans are eradicated after 30 years, even if they had not been repaid. In Slovenia, you are supposed to cover your living costs by yourself, although there are state scholarships available for people from vulnerable social environments. Their size depends on the family income, the student’s success and on whether they are living at home or not. The maximum scholarship with all the additions available is 290 € per month.

Do maintenance loans and the scholarships provide enough money to survive with them? In Ljubljana you can choose your dorm and the cheapest ones are around 70 € per month, so with the scholarship and “študentskimi boni” (students can eat in restaurants for half the price and get free street food), it would be possible to survive with the scholarship even without any parental help. In the UK, or at my college at Oxford at least, the accommodation and a part of the food for the term are together a bit more than £1400, and with the additional food costs would probably get to about £1600. For all three terms that comes up to £4800, still leaving a few thousand pounds for a bit more luxurious living. That being said, living out this year the costs are much higher, thus now there wouldn’t be as much money left for spending.

What about any extra funding available, like scholarships? In Slovenia, not only the above described scholarships are common, but we also have many others. Some are awarded to people that are studying for professions that are needed, others reward academic successes. They are available both at the high school and at the university level. Especially for people studying at home it is a very nice source of pocket money. Such scholarships are also available for studying abroad and a lot of Slovenes abroad have them. One of them even covers all of your costs – both tuition fee and also (even very generously) all your living costs. I have not heard of such public scholarships in England, except for some (rather low ones), given by companies, and some scholarships from the university, which are only given to few.

Which system is better and more equitable then? Although both systems seem to enable everyone to go and study, living just on the scholarship in Slovenia sounds a bit tough, while it seems perfectly doable in the UK. I therefore think that the British system would be better at letting everyone go to uni. Slovene system is very different from the British in that the government directly is controlling all the funding and giving all the money out, both to the universities and to the people. These are the remains of the socialistic system from the ex-Yugoslavia (and people would argue that the system of teaching, at least in high schools, is the legacy of those times, or even earlier, as well). On the other hand, just the sound of having free university sounds appealing to the people who all go and study, although many may not be suitable and never finish their studies, in a way wasting the country’s money. I would support a small tuition fee in Slovenia, one that everyone could afford and that would be subsidised for the ones that couldn’t, just so that students at the university were serious at studying. Otherwise, free university still sounds much better to me and taking a loan for your studies sounds terrifying for us – having a loan before you even have your first job. But at the same time, you also have to start paying taxes (a part of which goes to fund the universities) at the first job, no matter if you’ve even attended it.

I don’t know much about the economic implications of both systems and what they mean in terms of university regulation. However, the British loans are still rather regulated and affordable, and their system of tuition fees is much more student-friendly than the American is. Therefore, it might be better than the Slovene system. Still, just the sound of going to the university for free is great, and additionally being rewarded monthly for your academic successes by the state, is fantastic.