Scottish students still have to pay sometimes very high accommodation fees, and this is usually done through a loan.

Example: I studied in Edinburgh from 2008–2012, but was from Wales. I had to pay around £1800 per year tuition fees, but accommodation at its cheapest worked out at £300 per month, without taking into account costs like light and heat.

I have a student loan of about £30k, of which about £9k was tuition fees.

Free tuition would have saved me between a quarter and a third of the cost of going to university.

Now fees are greater than £9k per year, which many believe is absurd. Based on my example, assuming no inflation on living costs, I would have borrowings of £84k without even taking into account interest – all of which I would almost certainly never repay.

£300 a month for a student flat isn't really all that different to the rest of the UK - I lived in student accommodation in Manchester for four years and paid between £350 and £420 a month plus bills for houses in varying states of decay, with bills maybe being an extra £100 on top of that.

Looks like it does: “Students from Scotland are again the most positive, but there has been a statistically significant (6%) fall this year.”[1]

However fees are only paid by the government if a Scottish student (including those from elsewhere the EU, at least before Brexit) studies in Scotland; not if they study elsewhere in the UK.

[1] https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/student-academic-...

Given the people paying for it don't even get a degree out of the deal, it probably depends how the question is framed.

There's still a time investment.