I'd say in Scotland it isn't very common at all. Undergraduate degrees here are free for Scottish domiciled students, creating an incentive to stay (you need to pay for postgrad). In England and Wales tuition fees are £9,250 (due to increase to £10,500). Doing a year abroad as part of your degree is more common, but I'd say people uprooting themselves to undergo full studies in another country is less so.
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In general I don’t think many students will uproot themselves and move to a different country outside of Sweden if they can find the same education in Sweden, especially when you consider that education is free in Sweden.
Though I will caveat this by saying that this is also quite dependent on background. If you as a Swede have lived outside of Sweden at some point before going to university, in my experience at least, you are much more likely to end up studying in a different country. I say this as someone who is a Swede with an international expat background that completed high school in Sweden at an international school. Many of my former classmates ended up moving to other countries for university studies, including people who you would think of as very Swedish. The places that people in my class moved to study in are the Netherlands, Germany, France, England, Scotland, Italy, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark and the US.
One added factor that may have been at play is that most bachelor degrees in Sweden are taught in Swedish. If you have then been studying high school in English you are maybe then not as interested in changing language in combination with studying something more complicated at university.
It’s really common to move within the country over here, and recently a lot of people started to apply for academic mobility programs, for obvious reasons
In engineering universities certain pathways require that you spent some time abroad either as an intern or as a student. So, about 20 to 25% of the students go across Europe (and sometimes also Asia, and North America) and complete a double degree, or at least an exchange semester or full year in a university abroad each year.
Out of the 400ish graduate students who graduated at my uni the same year I did, at least 12 got enrolled at KTH, a dozen in Germany in various unis from TU9, a dozen in ICL, some went to NYU or Polytechnique Montréal, a few went to Japan, etc.
We also have a consistent amount of students doing the same the other way around from Brazil, Germany, China, Spain, etc every year, so I’d say, to answer OP’s question, this is definitely a thing.
I would say that most people study their bachelor’s in Portugal. It’s generally quite affordable, and I believe most universities have something called “regional preference” that makes it a bit easier for people from the same area as the university to get in (you still need to meet the grade requirements though). The biggest issue right now for university students is lack of affordable housing. God help you if you are from another region and end up studying in Lisbon.
As for studying abroad, quite a few people go on the Erasmus program. The places available to you depend on your university and course, but generally there are quite a few options. It’s also more likely for students to go study abroad when they want to do a master’s or doctorate, though many still study here.
No, in France it’s not common, maybe just a semester or a year sometimes for internships, but otherwise no, but no more internal migrations within the country.
It’s uncommon here too. If it’s done it’s usually when someone can’t get into a program here. Like for example medicine is really hard to get into as you basically need perfect grades to get accepted, so Austria is a popular option (they have a different admission process where you have to take an admission test), as well as Hungary (where there’s even German-taught options) or some private universities in other countries.
In the past it was common but nowdays it´s already very common due to the political situation and (low) quality of many local universities. Usually there are about 30 students in a high school class and I have heard from different people whose children or grandchildren have graduated this year that like 20-25 students out of such a class are leaving the country to study on a foreign university (mostly in Czech republic but also in other EU countries like for example Denmark…).
I know many people who considered doing it, but very few that actually did. In particular you see a lot of people considering studying in one of the Scandinavian countries on account of studying there being free for EU citizens (as opposed to roughly €2.400 per year in the Netherlands) as well as some people viewing the region as being culturally and economically similar to the Netherlands except better. They’re usually dissuaded either by the effort of moving or the realisation that the difference in housing/food/etc costs end up costing more than that €2.400.
Suppose it’s not really abroad, but it’s a different island so it feels like you’re leaving almost, but loads of people from here move to Scotland or England (Wales less often) for university, many come home after but many also just stay there.
Here at this point most students plan to study abroad if there’s even a slight chance for it… and many, if not most, of them don’t plan on coming back. Not that I wouldn’t do the same in their place. (Too bad that I was a uni student before we were in the EU… any foreign scholarships at the time were all the sort that I just wasn’t cut out for.)
Studying abroad for one semester as part of a Swedish program is very common. I can’t imagine studying abroad for 3-5 years is any common though.
A full study abroad is quite rare. But it’s not unheard of to do a part of your study abroad. Depends also a bit what you study and which school.
Highly unusual. One-year stays abroad are common, like with the Erasmus program, or for a postgraduate degree for those who can afford it. But uprooting your life at age 18 to move abroad for four years is definitely not.
Even moving to another region within Spain is not that usual either, honestly. Most people simply choose the university closest to them, at least for the undergrad.
No. Many students do take advantage of the Erasmus programme for a year or semester abroad, but it’s rare for students to go to abroad alltogether. Sometimes you’ll have student going abroad for specific studies (for example someone who failed the entrance exam for medicine will might to start out abroad instead), but all in all people tend to stay in the country.
However stuff changes on higher academic levels. For doctorates and especially postdoctorates, going abroad is something which happens regulary, and is often even expected.
To some degree common among people studying to vets, dentists, doctors etc. Many of those go to univiersities in hungary and poland because they don’t have good enough grades to get into the study in norway.
Not common unless it’s for med school. Non insignificant amount of Finns study medicine in the baltics. They have to pay for tuition there but it’s not a problem for future doctors.
I went to Kent which calls itself the European University. There were a significant point of Europeans on full degrees from around from Russia to Greece, to Finland, Sweden etc and then a metric ton from France. As well as a lot of Asian students from Malaysia and Hong Kong etc.
I think it was about 60/40 international but that’s a unique situation
Hehe. Absolutely normal. Especially when seeing our political parties all young people want is to get away.
Majority of our talent leaves.
Not really, public universities are pretty much free. Some leave for a year with Erasmus and so on, but not for the entire degree.
Extremely common since there is only one university here, which has few programs and a terrible reputation.
In Ireland it’s not that common, but Erasmus is very common. A lot of students will spend a semester abroad, and masters in a different country is fairly common.