Save £25,000 at university and join the 'tuition fee refugees'

By Patrick Collinson. Thousands of 18-year-olds are planning to study abroad, where courses are increasingly taught in English and tuition costs are a fraction of what they would have to pay at home
Welcome to the £9,000 tuition fee refugees. The number of British students applying to Dublin's Trinity College has jumped by 20% to nearly 2,000 this year. At University College Dublin (UCD), applications from students with British A-levels have surged 37% from 800 to around 1,100. The University of Groningen in the Netherlands, where many courses are taught entirely in English, has seen the number of applicants from Britain quadruple in the last two years alone.
British 18-year-olds are fleeing the prospect of a £50,000 bill for studying at home – and finding they can save as much as £25,000 over three years by studying abroad as well as enjoying a life-changing experience.
In Denmark, tuition fees for students from within the EU are zero. In the Netherlands, they are around €1,700 a year (£1,330), and it's even possible to access Dutch state grants worth around €500 (£390) a month (see page 5). Irish institutions such as Trinity and UCD, ranked among the top universities in Europe, charge just €2,250 a year (£1,760) to EU citizens.