Finnish students get allowance from the government for the duration of their studies (max ~60 months) and get government backed cheap loans which they start paying back after their studies.
My own experience is that there are people from very varying backgrounds in the Finnish universities.
Small tidbit of info:
In Finland students don't pay for studying. Instead, the government pays money to the students for studying.
I've heard this is not the case in US.
Monthly allowance (around 400-500EUR in total) and free university education (classes and labs are free, you have to buy or loan the books) are the main characteristics of Finnish university system. Student loans play only a small part. Many people in my student generation didn't even take them, even if they are more or less risk free loans.
Go to most of the small colleges in the US and you'll probably see the same thing. I don't know what it's like in Finland, but from what I've experienced at Swedish universities it also varies a lot. Uppsala, Lund, KTH etc have great student life and I didn't feel that people took it less seriously than at the american university I've been at.
Sure, we don't pay tuition, but usually parents don't pay for their childrens' living expenses during college either. I have about $50k in debt (very low interest loan), all from living expenses for 5 years. That plus the loss of income during this time means you can't really slack off.
School is free here too. Most people don’t go to college in either Finland or the US. (It’s slightly higher in the US.) But the average person who does go to college graduates with about $30,000 in debt. Which they will make up for given higher salary and lower taxes in the US within a few years. The median post-tax disposable income is $15,000 per year higher in the US than Finland.
Unfortunately same applies in Nordic countries too, where all education is free and all students get 500€ monthly no-questions-asked free money and housing.
Maybe it's because all of our schools are public?
For example higher ed. providers are funded based on enrollment and rate of graduation. If someone does not graduate, significant chunk (20-30%) of money won't be paid at all. This creates some incentive for the institution to actually guide and see that people don't fall through all kinds of cracks. I guess it's necessary when there is no ordinary paying customer relationship involved.
It's true that Sweden/Finland don't do quite as well in this area as places like Denmark (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_Denmark), Germany, or France, all of which supply are fairly generous with living cost grants for students.
Compared to US students, though, they're doing great.
There is literally no tuition in Sweden. The loans are for rent and general cost of living. You can have literally zero means and still go to university in another city.
The Finnish school system is nice, until you wanna go to college/university.
I think higher education in Finland isn't anything special, if you actually want a quality education you'll have to go abroad (like the actually successful people do here anyway). Even the arguably best schools aren't that good. People mostly coast through them once they get in and just want the piece of paper at the end. Good parties though.
Years later in the work force they'll wake up and see they barely make more money then an electrician with their fancy degree because of the insane tax policies here. What's the point of having a nice degree if you're still gonna have a moderately low salary compared to other European countries?
In Europe, these are the countries I know of that either have no tuition, or only nominal fees up to €100/semester or so (for EU/EEA citizens): Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden. Denmark is the most generous, not only charging no tuition, but even paying students about €700/mo to attend university, in order to cover living expenses [1].
"Finns are paid to study. I think students in most of the Nordic countries are."
There are scholarships (all over Europe) that depend on acquiring a minimal number of Bologna-credits, and those (at least in some countries) existed since the foundation of the higher education itself.
Here in Finland, our education is also free (even for foreigners), but we are now starting to put limits on certain things, like the number of tuition free degrees you can have.
There is now talks of charging foreigners and even introducing basic fees for citizens.
Education is important here because the labour market salaries are strictly based on your qualifications and experience, not your experience or ability alone.
This is why I hope Finland never starts to charge for tuition fees, unless they do away with the qualification based pay scale.
In the future, I think free online education could replace paid education as long as the government recognised the achievements of so called 'self-taught' students. I realise you couldn't do this in full for just any profession though.
This is not unique to Germany. Finland also offers free degrees for everybody, although there are rumbles about changing this from 2017-ish. Get in while you can ;)
It's also worth mentioning that in smaller countries like Finland, the level of English is correspondingly higher, since everybody has been exposed to it since they were young children and, by the time you get to the university level, most textbooks are in English only. In larger EU countries like Germany and France this is not the case.
I'm a 22 year old university student in Sweden (starting my 2nd year now) and I find it hard to imagine life with school costing a fortune like this.
Sure I, and most students in Sweden, take loans to pay for food, rent and books but the school itself is free - even now! We're also getting a good low rent loan with a part allowance. No wonder we're having so many foreign students. That's going to change from next year though when the foreigners will get charged.
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