As a high school student, rarely anyone is completely sure of what they want to do with their lives. Usually, even if you have a general direction, you just look for the course not really caring about the country. And the chances are, that way you will find multiple programmes that interest you in different countries, which leads you to the next big decision in your life: where do I go?
Tuition fees
Of course, the first thing for everyone to consider will be the tuition fees. In that aspect, The Netherlands is one of the better choices. Sure, the education might not be free like in Sweden or Denmark, but it is quite far from being very expensive like the UK or USA. The tuition fees in The Netherlands are around 2000 euros per year, while, for example, the UK Universities usually charge around 9000 pounds per year. In USA it could even go up to about 26.000 USD. Another advantage about studying in the Netherlands is that it's very easy to apply for the Dutch tuition fee loan when you are an EU citizen. The interest rate is very low: ranging from 0.00% to 0.01% (source: duo.nl).
Home is where the heart is
Another thing most of you will probably take into consideration is the proximity of your home country, or at least how easy or hard it is for you to go home. From my personal experience, The Netherlands has a big advantage of being a fairly small country. There is always at least one airport nearby, and there are also airports in other countries that are easy to get to and are close to The Netherlands (Belgium and Germany, for example). The number of airports also means that you will get to choose between a pretty big variety of airlines as well. That is not always the case with bigger countries as their airports are based around bigger cities, which are not rarely quite far away from each other.
Comparing countries
The next point that we all look into while comparing countries are costs of living and job opportunities. The Netherlands is not the cheapest country to live in, but also not the most expensive one. All in all, you should be able to manage if you can keep track of the money you spend. As for job opportunities, student jobs can probably be found almost anywhere if you look hard enough and you' re not too picky.
Student housing
For the student housing, again it depends on the country and how the University deals with it, whether they will have a company partner that deals with housing or a campus or maybe some different option. Nevertheless, most universities take care of it one way or another. A different housing issue is the availability. In most cases, the universities will keep in mind the number of potential and current students in relation to their housing option, but what if they aren't the only university? In most big cities that have multiple Universities, housing can be a big issue as the markets tend to be overcrowded with demand and not enough suppliers. The smaller cities with generally one university, don't usually have that issue.
As for my personal experience and why I chose to study in The Netherlands instead of somewhere else, it was mostly for the variety of English speaking programmes, especially for a country where English isn't the main language. A big factor was also the money, specifically the tuition fees, because even though I could have gotten a loan both here and in, for example, the UK, ultimately, I'll be left with a debt either way. And if that is the case, I would rather have a debt of 8000€ than a debt of 30000 pounds.
If you would like to know more about the Dutch Educational System, tuition fees and The Netherlands. Thinking about studying abroad? Read more on this page and download the whitepaper below!
