<p>The Sunday Times of October 25 contains numerous tables and articles that present data about the leading universities in the UK. They include criteria such as teaching satisfaction, heads assessments, research quality, and dropout rates. </p>
<p>An interesting article is “Follow the money to ease the pain of tuition fees”</p>
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<p>I am wondering if the readers of the Sunday Times would classify our discussions about costs of tuition in the fiction or comics section.</p>
<p>I would KILL to pay in-country tuition. However, if the student is a UK citizen but the family hasn’t lived in the country for the three years before university, I am told that they also have to pay international rates.</p>
<p>It’s within the EU. I know because it happened to me. I’m an EU citizen (EU and UK students pay the same) but because my family had lived overseas for a long time I had to pay international fees for my undergraduate. Now I’m a grad student I’ve been here long enough to be considered a ‘home’ student and don’t have to pay international fees (actually I pay nothing and get paid a salary due to being sponsored by UK medical Research Council.). It’s all to do with taxes. If your family hasn’t lived in the UK/EU they consider they haven’t paid enough taxes to cover the government higher education subsidy.(because that’s why the home student fees are low. Taxes are paying a large percentage)</p>
<p>What you don’t realise is, no-one in the UK saves for college. Until 1998 there were no tuition fees at all (for UK students) and their introduction was VERY politically controversial. If the fees were as high as US college, I expect about 5% of my friends here would be at university. There is no such thing as financial aid really, (compared to the US.) so all of the cost would fall on the parents. Student loans exist (but only for UK students) but they are only £4000 per year and are limilted to that amount at the moment.</p>