In Scotland, there are no tuition fees charged to anyone from the EU (except England and Wales - funny story - see bottom). I have a student loan from my studies, but it was only due to the need for living expenses, and the government insisted (legally) that my parents contributed to them based on their income. The loan's interest rate is capped at inflation (0% real term interest), so it is quite literally the best loan you'll ever get. You start to pay it off after you reach a certain income level (£15k/year, I think), paying something like 4% of your income towards the loan, and if after a fixed amount of time you have not paid it off (because you never earned enough) then the loan is written off.

People here are frequently warned of the silliness of paying off their student loans early. If you get any kind of loan with interest above inflation (which is basically all of them), it would make more sense to pay that off before the student loan.

EU law says universities must charge foreign EU nationals the same rate as they charge locals. There is a loophole in that this does not apply to the "home nations" within the UK, so Scottish universities (and English and Welsh return) can charge the other home nations' students whatever they like.

Out of interest, what was the Scottish universities' plan if the independence referendum had succeeded (in which case EU law would have prevented them from charging or discriminating against English students, and suddenly England's 10-times-bigger population would have had a £9,000 per year incentive to go to Scotland for uni...)

The vast majority of the big money comes from non-EU citizens studying in Scotland, who get charged double, triple or even more than English students, especially for subjects with good job prospects like business, law and medicine. I imagine they would have increased non-EU places at the expense of EU places to compensate. There was an idea to allow foreign nationals to stay much longer after finishing their degree in order to work and gain experience, which would have made studying in an independent Scotland more attractive.

I am quite aware that the situation might be different, I still consider most of my points valid for the US though, for example regarding quality of education provided + that the business seems a little bit "shady" to me.

btw: a degree from the University of London (via distance learning, can be done from many parts of the world) is about ~5000£ (~6482$) - again we are talking about flexible payment + great study resources (6 semester's worth) + a full bachelor's degree!

This however seems (to me) w/ all due respect like a "get rich quick" scheme that won't work for 99% of people. And the other 1% would have probably made it some other way and are possibly paying 30k$ for it (and I want to stress again: 30k$ for a 6 month crash course with _no_ degree in the end)

I see your perspective but also from a US perspective the cost is much lower than a Bachelor's in CS (just to be clear I'm not claiming this is equivalent to a BS). So it is faster, cheaper, and with better repayment terms than one can get from a US university.

Now, a problem dev bootcamp type programs have is lack of accreditation (can't call themselves universities) and lack of curriculum standardization across code schools. In the US, engineering and CS universities have ABET accreditation to solve this problem which sets the model / baseline curriculum for what a BS in CS must cover.

Do the European schools have some sort of curriculum standardization for CS? The larger question I am wondering is if an international CS degree carries the same weight as a domestic one in the US.

Or is USA the outlier? I paid $100 a year here in Norway, e.g. nothing.

Eg = for example

Ie = id est = that is

In Sweden 10K would cover most of your living expenses for a year. Oh, you're talking about the cost of education? Well that part is free ;)

The original example was 10k for a "private university via distance learning", which I assume won't be free in Sweden either. FWIW, I paid 250 euros per semester in Germany, most of which was for the public transport ticket.

Private universities don't exist in Sweden, at least none that offer CS degrees. There are a few MBAs for which one has to pay the full price but they are usually only attended by professionals and charged to their employer.

Same in Poland - all of the best universities in the country are public universities and are free for everyone. Private ones have a reputation for being very very poor and something people sign up for just to get the paper saying they have "a degree". Even then, they cost something like $300/semester so if you really need that paper it's not that expensive.

In Australia, bachelors degrees are $15k to $30k, and you don't pay until you have a job. And with the benefits rules, sometimes you can receive more in benefits to enable you to study than the student debt you'll incur.

I'm a little surprised US undergraduate tuition manages to stay that high, as it seems it would often be cheaper to migrate to Europe or Australia for the purposes of study (and Australia and Europe are quite receptive to that... education is Australia's third biggest export...)

> and you don't pay until you have a job

Some US student loans work this way with income-based repayment. However there are plenty of gotchas: It only applies to federal loans. Many people with large amounts of school loans > $15k-20k/year for 4-5 years can't actually get this much in federal loans, and also only a subset of what they can get has subsidized interest. I'm not sure whether loan interest continues to accrue normally in the period where payments are reduced. I think this depends on the type of federal loan and there are quite a few. Some are completely unsubsidized (i.e., accrue interest while in school).

the united states is the outlier here

You're right about this and it took a few international responses to remind me of how messed up college is in the US. It's easy to forget that some countries have it much better off than the norm here.

What's more is the example I used for the US is on the low end.

The average annual tuition (with room and board) from the US Department of Education is $16k public and $42k private [1].

> For the 2014–15 academic year, average annual current dollar prices for undergraduate tuition, fees, room, and board were estimated to be $16,188 at public institutions, $41,970 at private nonprofit institutions, and $23,372 at private for-profit institutions.

What's more jarring is that these numbers are a bit cooked to blend 4-year and 2-year schools whereas most students don't consider community colleges (which grants Associate's degrees vs Bachelor's… I'm not sure if every country has something similar).

The actual average annual numbers in cureent dollars (as of 2014-2015) are $18,632 for 4-year public and $37,990 for 4-year private. For some reason the private numbers blend nonprofit and for-profit private schools whereas a figure excluding for-profit would probably be more accurate.

[1]: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76

It's funny that nonprofits would charge almost twice as much as for-profits.