EU students pay nothing at Scottish Universities

There has been an increase in EU students applying to Scottish universities this year, where it has emerged that they will not have to pay university fees.

The six percent rise in applications has highlighted an anomaly in EU law which requires students from other EU countries be treated the same as local Scottish students. But this loophole has left young people from England, Wales and Northern Ireland facing fees of £9,000 to study at the same institutions.

English students living in Scotland will face tuition fees at the likes of Glasgow and Edinburgh whilst working next to fellow EU students who have never been to Scotland before.

The law also means that students studying in the Republic of Ireland will pay nothing to study in Scotland whilst their peers across the border will leave a four year Scottish course with thousands of pounds of debt.

Whilst 17,316 EU students applied to Scottish institutions this year, application figures show that EU students applying to study in England are down 16.5 percent.

It currently costs the Scottish Government £75 million to fund EU students, a budget it draws from the UK Exchequer. The Welsh government has announced it will subsidise its students studying in Scotland.

Scottish students have had free university education since 2008 when the £2,300 graduate endowment was scrapped. Alex Salmond’s government announced last autumn that it would be raising the cap on fees for English, Welsh and Irish students up to £9,000 per year.

The government in Holyrood appears to have suffered similar problems as the coalition regarding fee increases. Universities in Scotland were allowed to set fees for other UK students as low as £1,800 but the average fee charged will now be just under £7,000.

The number of institutions charging the maximum amount took the government by surprise. The Scottish education secretary was “pleased the majority of our universities have shown restraint”, but he had previously said fees would be lower than in England.

Despite institutions such as Aberdeen and the Glasgow School of Art offering a free fourth year with their new £9,000 fees, this will make no difference in price of a degree between Scotland and England.

Robin Parker, President of NUS Scotland has said the overall fall in applications, at 1.6 percent across the country, shows universities have “made a huge mistake in overpricing themselves, missing out on the opportunity to attract talented students to Scotland”.

But the advocacy group Universities Scotland has called for Scottish students to be charged for their education as well. A report last year claimed that Scottish higher education faced a funding shortfall of £220 million.

Staff in many universities have had to be laid off and Glasgow University has been forced to close its Modern Languages department to save on costs.

Despite the nationwide fee rise for English students, the UK government has said they should not be put off applying to university, as no one will have to pay what they owe up front.