https://www.csn.se/bidrag-och-lan/studiestod/studiemedel.htm... says Swedes can get 655.680 SEK (77.503 USD) for 240 weeks (5 student years?), and 198.720 SEK of it is a stipend (ie. only pay back 456.960 SEK).

Maybe it was less before?

Your numbers are way out of date. If you start studying today you can expect to get about $45k in loans plus $20k in subsidies over 5 years, assuming you study full time and pass enough of your courses.

You only needed $30k to survive for five years in Sweden?

My family of four spends less than $15K per year for necessities in Sweden (housing, clothes, food, car ins, phone, internet, other utilities), so I can believe that a single student could live for $6000 per year if they have roommates or live in student housing. We live in a very small town and rent a nice house for less than $500/month, so of course your choices will make all the difference. We couldn't do this in Stockholm or Gothenburg, for example.

That’s pretty remarkable... can you give more details on monthly budget:

After $500 for rent that’s only $750 left. Food: $500? Cell phone/ internet:$70? Clothing: goodwill? Car insurance: $100? Utilities:?

I'm really sorry that I don't have accurate numbers at hand, but I can give you some estimates. I will also note that the SEK/USD exchange rate is not quite the same as when it sort of got fixed in my mind. I think of it as about 10:1, but I guess it's really more like 8.3:1, so instead of approx. $15K USD maybe it's more like $18K.

Anyway, here are some numbers that I know or can give pretty accurate details for:

Rent under 4500 SEK/mo

Phone data SEK 400 per 6 mo. -- pay as you go - 20 GB for 6 months and never have had to add more. Wifi at home, on the train, and both in the city center and at the University means I rarely use my own.

Phone calls SEK 100 has lasted me god knows how long for minutes. I don't think I add minutes more frequently than every six months or so.

Car insurance is something like SEK 2500 or 3000 per year for a <10 year old car.

Food ~1500 SEK per week -- we are vegetarian and rarely buy anything fancy; we also grow fruit and veg in the summer; this of course can be quite variable, with some weeks being SEK 1200 and others SEK 2000 or more.

Utilities: we have a geo heat pump; we don't pay very much in utilities; we mostly charge our EV at the train station for free.

Clothes: H&M primarily, Amazon.de occasionally (I guess we have Amazon.se now too) -- my wife and I don't buy new clothes very often, though my children definitely need new stuff regularly. Still, we don't spend very much on clothes, but I will freely admit that this is the one I don't have as much sense of.

So, minus an exact number on utilities and clothes, it looks like a bit more than SEK 10,000 per month. Add some exact amount for utilities and clothing, and I think we are within a $15K-18K range.

Europe is cheaper than most people think. My family of 3 spends less than 20k/year including renting a house in Spain, 100 meters from the shore

Ah, yes, I maybe should mention that my house is about 50 m from the Baltic? The view of our bay is a significant benefit. Of course, it's covered with ice for several months of the year, and not everybody likes that. >.<

Here in Dutch students it is more like this:

350eur for rent. 200eur for food. 25eur for internet, no car needed. Utilities included in student rental, otherwise 30eur. clothing and fun things: everything else.

Current system provides a government backed loan at 0.00% interest of up to 800eur/month, which you then need to pay back depending on income in 35 years. (Much like ISA, but with the government). You get 100eur/month for health insurance (basic health insurance costs the same). and 100 euro/month for renting. These last 2 are based on income and available for everyone under a certain income limit. (Almost all students are below this limit)

We had a system where you received 300/month and could then get a loan on top of it. But that was replaced by the neoliberals.

Hope that enlightens it a bit.

Seems you get $84 per week as an allowance, and can withdraw $210 a week as a loan. These are 2016 numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_financial_aid_(Sweden)

You also get, I think, about $150 a month housing allowance.

So on top of your $150 + 4×$84 = ca. $500 monthly income, you only need to take about $800 a month as a loan to survive. (Remember, no tuition fees.)

If you're able to score affordable housing (~$300/month is not uncommon for student accommodation and if sharing even $150~200 is not unheard of) it's not that much of a stretch. Also big difference between Stockholm (and to some extent Gothenburg) and the rest of the country in living costs.

Their numbers are a bit off the mark. You'd get $45k in loans and $20k in grants over five years, so a total of $65k. But yes, as a student it's completely possible to get by on this amount.

As others said you also get some grants that you don't have to repay. This was also 6 years ago and the numbers have changed a little since then.

But otherwise yes. And I didn't live a very frugal life and I didn't have a lot of funds when I started out, just enough for furniture and similar.

My friend did his Masters from Finland and said his monthly expenses were about 200-300 Euros in his first year. I think he spent a bit more in subsequent years after getting a part-time job. That's 18000+ euros if extended to 5 years.

Don't overestimate living expenses in a 500 year old walkable town with a small university in a --socialist democracy-- country that cares about its citizens.

Actually a democratic socialist form of government, not socialist democracy. There's actually a big difference.

Democratic socialism is not averse to capitalism and understands that the private sector has a role to play.

But it also assumes that government has responsibilities to its citizens that amount to more than a minimal set of rights.

Up until Reagan, the US had similar policies, with the one exception of health care.

Thanks for the clarification. I should have been more careful about the words I used.

It’s not a “social democracy” It’s a democratic country, with a market economy, and a social democratic approach to labor relations.

> socialist democracy

In Nordic countries, we don't really like it when Americans call us socialist democracies. We are market economies like everyone else. Here's a take from the Danish prime minister: https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9650030/denmark-prime-ministe...

Well, here in America, we don't believe that Capitalism and "society" should coexist together. The people help sustain Capitalism - not the other way around. Also, we don't believe in providing such communist things as healthcare for everyone, because we strongly believe Capitalism does NOT benefit from a strong and healthy workforce.

Haha, in America we think it's important to sacrifice society to capitalism. Funny because it's too true.

There’s some Baptists-and-bootleggers nonsense going on between right-wing Republicans tarring center-left policies as “socialist” and avowed socialists doing the same to bait-and-switch voters into supporting them.

Seriously? What's up with people who couldn't even list the basic tenets of various political systems suddenly being for this or against that, on the basis of name alone?

Minor rant, but the greatest tragedy of recent American politics (1980+) has been convincing people they're dumb and will never be as smart as others. It's set up a terrible cycle of (1) listen to "experts," (2) forget that one can do one's own thinking, (3) parrot expert views back to your peers, (4) feel secretly ashamed of your own ignorance, (5) become more strident in "your" views, GOTO (1).

It really frustrates me these days when almost everything has to have a pro or anti identity. The extent to which the population has divided itself thanks to this excessive labelling is truly mind-boggling.

Is it really that difficult to discuss something without having to choose what fucking side you're on, or having it chosen for you based on a series of shallow value judgments?

Sorry. But I am Pakistani. From my perspective, if the government is providing free health coverage, subsidized accommodation to students, free education [0], and good public transit, then it is fulfilling the ideals of socialists. However, the label of the actual system might be different, which is totally fair.

[0] I think Finland is now charging a small tuition fee, at least for non-EU students.

A lot of these were advocated for and often implemented by (originally) socialist democratic parties so I can see where you're coming from, but I think that a 'real' socialist democracy would be going a good step further.

The ideals of socialism are that the means of production are owned by the community. So it owns all industry as well.

Communism says that there isn't any individual property.

Scandinavian countries have never been socialist.

The rate of state ownership of capital is fairly high in the Nordics, though. In that sense, they're relatively socialist countries.

Maybe they're not "really socialist", but then by that standard, is there a "really capitalist" country? Even the US, which is probably the most capitalist "developed" country, has some state ownership of production.

state ownership and community ownership aren't the same thing either, to be fair. But given existing systems it's probably the closest one can get.

Its not "free" its free at the point of use, its paid for out of general taxation.

Otherwise Bismarck's 19th century Prussia would be socialist

$30k covered housing and food for 5 years? Seems like there has to be some other subsidy present you're not mentioning lol

$30K is the loan which is usually 1-2% APR. In Finland, which more or less copies Sweden policies, also gives you subsidized housing (50% or around 250€, which ever is less, median where I went to was around 400€ for 1bd apartment), subsidized food (2€ lunch and dinner every day of the week, median lunch when eating out is around 10€), and around another 250€ a month in general student aid. There are also a lot miscellaneous student discounts for public transportation and it is common for private companies to also offer a slight discount to students only.

Not sure about Sweden, but in Finland there is definitely some subsidised student housing. That said, as a student in the Netherlands I rented a room for 250 euros a month, so I think the 6k a year may not be that far off.

The author numbers are outdated. You can get up to $65k for 5 years of studies.

Yes. I got ~30k in Sweden, but that's around 20 years ago.

Do not think that's correct. The loan part is about 9300 USD per year (40 weeks full time study), which sums up to about 46500 over five years. On top of that is a grant of about 3900 USD that you don't have to pay back. Reference : https://www.csn.se/languages/english/student-grants-and-loan...