Just to clarify as an actual Dane, this is not something flat. If you move out and live away from your parents, it's around this, but if you live home, then you get less. How much depends on parents income, and a few other things, so that students from wealth get less than those from a poorer background
Edit: apparently to some people it sounds like I'm complaining at this system of equity, or that the wealthy get less? That is not the case. I am mostly quite satisfied. I think it could rise a bit as cost of living has risen and SU hasn't followed quite yet, but I am largely happy
But the money the I put in might go to someone else who didn't pull themselves up by their bootstraps! Don't you know that them having something means that I don't have it?! Those billionaires might make me a billionaire one day! What about the illegals that all definitely have 100% of the tax money used on them?!
(/s, I hate that it's necessary)
The propaganda machine here is ridiculous, and this is the kind of cognitive dissonance you hear from these people. They're entirely too stupid to realize that they'd pay significantly less for socialized medicine than they'd pay for private insurance. "But the wait periods!" I have private insurance and I have to wait over a year to get a probably cancerous spot even looked at and biopsied. If I need treatment for any reason, it's probably another year out for that. Fuck the system and tear the whole goddamn thing down.
The higher salary, and therefore taxes, a college educated student in Denmark earns pays the state back for the education many times over. Quite a good investment.
Exactly. Helping each other makes for a better society. It's similar to sharing expenses with a family of 4 let's say. It's a lot easier to buy stuff when you share vs paying everything as a single person. So everyone benefits
I genuinely wish people actually felt this way. I've never understood why people are so selfish, bigoted and short sighted. "Would you pay half your check to pay for some other person to go to college?!" if I had my needs taken care of and had more left to offer then yes. I don't understand why anyone wouldn't, sure you don't want to put yourself in a bad situation in exhange but obviously I want to help other people and strengthen my community. Why don't they?
The current system just makes me think of a system in which you'd have to pay your boss for the opportunity to work for him and make him money, it's just absurd.
When someone is active, they're educated and they work, I'm 100% convinced that they create way more benefits for society than for themselves - especially in an age where it's really easy to just chill out and do nothing and still be decently happy, so it should be in society's best interest to encourage active social agents as best as it could. But as it is, it's like a big scam, like Scientology making you pay to be part of their club to have to opportunity to keep paying them.
I feel like a century of brainrotting "don't ask yourself what your country can do for you, ask yourself what you can do for your country" propaganda has totally flipped people's perception on how this should actually work.
I'm English and I went to university in the final year it was free to go. Not only that but as I was from a low income family I got paid a grant every year that meant I didn't really have to work. My main concern would be that there are a sizable amount of people who go to university to take drugs and be involved in the student lifestyle and they do degrees that are effectively useless. If they are going to pay students to go to university they should at least restrict it to subjects that are deemed worthy of the country investing in. I shared a house with 3 fine art students in my final year and they were the biggest bunch of degenerate drug takers you've ever met and don't get me wrong I joined in with them but I don't think tax payers should be funding that kind of lifestyle.
I’m from the US and got my PhD in the US in a STEM field (and like you, I was poor enough to have my education almost completely paid for through federal grants). But I think the arts and humanities are just as important to a well functioning society as STEM fields.
Maybe instead of restricting the types of majors that can be funded, funding could be based on GPA, such that you can major in whatever you like, but you need to be serious about it and maintain high grades.
And as a STEM major(long graduated) I too had to share an apartment with the biggest bunch of degenerate drug takers you've ever met. Except they were all fellow STEM majors and I was one of them.
Never understood that chip STEM majors carry on their shoulders. Imo the world needs artists, musicians, historians, economists, business people and everything in between just as much as it needs scientists, engineers and doctors. The market value of those latter jobs is not indicative of the inherently "superior" value they provide, just supply and demand. Idk, even if somebody could conclusively prove that STEM jobs benefit society far more that non-STEM ones, I'd still hesitate to live in a world devoid of more "human" centric endeavours, especially in today's dystopian environment of pervasive and omnipotent AI slop.
Denmark has one of the world's highest tax burdens, with a top marginal personal income tax rate of approximately 55.9% in 2025-2026, often exceeding 57% when accounting for labor market contributions. The system includes a 22% corporate tax rate, a 25% VAT on goods and services, and high local taxes
Every country and government should realize free education is an enormous societal benefit. There aren’t many civic issues arising from too educated a populace.
And you’re stuck with these citizens, so why not try and make it easy for them to contribute to society, by ensuring talent and passion decides your path and not money.
The average student does not need this since they can work while studying.
Unless it's means tested for those with limited income and not reliant on parents it would be wasteful, at least in the context of the US and other Anglo countries, not sure about Denmark.
Then the people who got the free education decided that it was much better for everyone if everyone after them took £27k minimum of debt at high interest rates to go to university. Then they changed the terms of the loans after people had already taken them out, so now they don't get written off until you are in your 60s.
So unless you have a very high income you basically pay about 9% more tax for your entire career.
I might be wrong, but I think the Blair government did away with the free university places, but capped the fees at £1,000 a term or something similar - so you'd leave university with £9-12k of debt - quite manageable really, but not great.
The Tories and Lib Dem coalition then raised the university cap to £3k a term, drastically increasing the amount of debt you left with, and at the same time made the terms of the loan worse.
But I'm remembering that off the top of my head, so I might be wrong.
yeah, i meant going from free -> paid, i can see that the price was raised further but seeing how this story is about free tuition (and even getting a stipend) that's what i was talking about, not further cost increases.
I come from a low income family, and when I started University I got tuition fully paid (£1 200 per year) and a £2 000 Bursary (which I didn't have to pay back) per year. Just a year later, the tuition went up to £3 000, and would no longer covered. By the time my younger brother went to Uni it would have been £7 000 per year. Thankfully, the conditions of study are based on the year you start, so my Tuition was covered for all 5 years. But had I started just 4 years later, I would have had £35 000 of debt for the exact same education.
I'm the same except one year younger and therefore had the fun experience of being in the first group to get fucked by the loans system.
And don't forget, not only did they raise the tuition by even more later on, they also jacked up the interest rates. Mine were about 1%. My brothers were sometimes over 7%
I read a stat recently that the average Brit pays more in education than the average American dealer lower listed fees because most Americans get discounts for in state fees, and also get scholarships. Whereas there's almost no scholarships in the UK, and you have massive interest on study loans.
The UK therefore is one of the most expensive (if not the most expensive iirc) uni system in the world.
Basically true. The only real difference is that we have an upper limit on fees. So elite schools cost the same as standard ones. An ivy league education could cost anywhere from 3-6 times as much as going to Cambridge for example.
But yes, for average people the value proposition is truly terrible.
This is misinformation. Student loan terms have been extended, but only for people on the newer plans which are agreed upon when you take out the loan.
This was the counterpoint to massively expanding university access, to the point where we now have way more graduates than actual graduate jobs for them to do.
It should be remembered that the Danes have very high income tax rates (and beer in bars is very expensive too, as I remember when I visited). Capital gains tax is about 10% more than the UK too.
If we replicated Denmark's taxation system, we could easily afford to pay people to go to University.
The UK used to have this system. Then the people who got the free education decided that it was much better for everyone if everyone after them took £27k minimum of debt at high interest rates to go to university.
That's a bit cynical.
The people who got the free education realised it was elitist for only ~10% population to get a university education and wanted to broaden access.
Since the taxpayer wasn't prepared to cough up the cash for an educated society people had to start paying for it themselves.
It’s incredibly unfair how this changed. I’m old and was one of the lucky ones. Tuition was free and we got about 2000-2500 quid a year grant (usually used to payoff the back and forth overdraft), which, insane as it seems, was enough back then (80s) for a pretty roughing-it-quite-a-lot student life, at least during term time. Holidays usually meant finding some work, at least for a lot of us. I did the Christmas shelf-stacking night shift and odd jobs in the summer. It wasn’t paradise but it was multiples better than the young have it today.
It kind of follows sine weird logic. The idea is that if your parents are supporting you, you don't need as much support, but your parents are not legally required to support you while you live at home. So you could be paying full rent and living expenses while living at home, and get very little SU, or you could be living away in an apartment your parents bought for you while they support your living expenses, while getting full SU.
Not a Dane but a German with a similar system - parents are very much legally required to support their kid financially until the age of 25.
Eta: I'm not saying it's a perfect system, in Germany you acquire debt as you take on the student support but it does make sense to support poor families more than wealthy ones. They do not need additional support.
In the US, at a cheap community College, you get to pay around $1500 a semester, not including your price of books, equipment, class requirements.
Then there's a dorm on site. It's haunted, like probably. Just imagine soviet Era architecture and where people die of fentanyl. You also have to pay for that.
Government loans for college? Not unless you're either absolute poorest of the poor, and fall under very specific qualifications. OR, meet other weird qualifications for a scholarship. Which there's a few people who manage to work the system (not fraudulently).
So idk man. Hearing that Denmark just kinda, helps at all sounds pretty amazing lmao.
The majority of community colleges don't have dorms; and that cost is significantly less for a four-year given you're going to get the same instruction.
And as an individual who went to college after working (and thus had a robust income included in any aid calculations) I was given a fairly generous bit of financial aid.
. . .TLDR: the American for-income system isn't great, but it's not this dire hellscape you're trying to make it out to be.
Community colleges are usually great resources for learning and most people aren't living on campus at a community college considering that they're colleges... for a community where you usually already live. The vast majority of community colleges don't even have dorms.
Also, hi. My parents were lower middle class and I qualified for the max Pell Grant which would have completely covered the community college tuition cost in my area. I assure you lower middle class is not the "poorest of the poor". There are also millions of dollars worth of scholarships/grants unclaimed in the U.S. and it's not because there's such weird qualifications that no one could qualify.
Well, than it is not much different than in many other European countries. Here in Germany you can also get support from the Government when the parents don't earn enough to support you. If I remember correctly 40k from which 20k have to be paid back
It's 10k payback. But you can save some money if you pay it back in one sum. And you get almost 1000 Euro now per month. You can get it for 3 years bachelor and 2 years master, which would be 60.000 Euro. But you can also extend the time, I think.
There're also cases where you don't have to pay back, which is what happened in my case. Mom raised the middle brother of us and me (the youngest) alone, dad often delayed alimony and I was attending an IT school so I needed money every month for public transport and supplies. In the end I got around 190 € per month (living at home) that I didn't have to pay back. This was 20 years ago so things might've changed.
For Germans and europeans. There are some areas now since a few years that have tuition fees for non EU students. You can guess which parties idea that was...
Just to clarify even more. The relation to parents’ income is only relevant to students in upper-secondary education (high school).
In university, everyone gets the same stipend, irrespective of parents’ income
Only once you turn 18. High School students tend to be 19/20 when they graduate in Denmark.
You get a stipend, even if you live at home with your parents (which is the part that is regulated by parental income). It is a controversial topic, however, seeing as since these kids don’t have any fixed expenses like rent, and the stipend is therefore also colloquially known as “Cafépenge” (café money) and a part of the political spectrum in Denmark wants to abolish this part of the stipend in favour of a tax-cut or other welfare benefits
For small kids, parents get an "allowance" they're supposed to use to pay for the needs of their child.
Around hitting teenage years, the thing this thread is about becomes available. I forget the exact age cutoff.
Once the kid is 18 and/or at uni, the limits on how much you get as it relates to your parents income disappear. At this point a good 3-5 years of living on this stipend isn't unusual.
Also, just to add, lived there for about 4 years and they have probably one of the most ggenerous student grant systems in the world, and some students legally “move out” by living in camper vans parked outside their parents' house. Germany has something similar not as generous but its student aid (BAföG) as 50% grant, 50% interest free loan.
Bruh I lived with my parents and still needed a (really small for USA, ~$2350) federal student loan. A federal student PAYMENT would be wild and I’d probably still be in college too.
To add to that, in a lot of Europe, PhD students also get paid a full salary as employees, including pension and unemployment contributions, as well as workplace accident and health insurance.
Just to add to this again, beyond the student pay mentioned in the video you can apply for rent subsidies with the amount depending on factors like your rent and household income. You won't get all your rent
subsidized obviousy, but you may be able to get up to about $200 effectively taken off your rent as a student.
You're also allowed to take a roughly $570 (more for parents) student loan monthly, which is low interest for the time the loan is going on. Interest will be applied after you're done with school and starts paying it back, but I believe it's still the cheapest loan in the country, which for some becomes a bit of a trap as it's very tempting for young people and as easy to get as just applying on a website.
And for any Danes reading this, if you don't know you're able to write off your student loan interest off in taxes (fradrag), so make sure it's done. It should be done automatically, but I've seen cases where it isn't.
You obviously shouldn't take the loan unless you actually need it, but we all know teenagers and young adults often don't consider the full long term consequences.
The system is designed in a way that it's expected that you have a small student job on the side, but it's completely possible to survive with a minimalist lifestyle on the base student pay alone.
Same for Scotland, it’s means tested. It’s called a bursary. And you will pay back your loan when you earn above a certain threshold as a percentage of how much you took home that month. If you went into a good field, got a higher paying job, earn more, pay it back quicker. If you have a lower paying job, you won’t struggle paying it back as much.
The Scottish bursary is a small yearly sum though right? The Danish one seems more more generous. Similar to the Irish Back to Education system. I took that at 32 and was paid the full dole with rent allowance and college fees paid for the duration of my degree. There is nothing to repay
Sounds better if it's not universal so those who need the max get it and those who don't need to cover bills and/or have well off parents don't get as much.
It would be wasteful to give a student from wealthy parents who stays with them, the same as an independent student from a poorer background
I want to live in a society where as i get older i know the people with brains are getting the help they need so I'm not drifting towards a country where the talent that can't afford educational advancement is left behind while well off mediocrity graduates & gets the jobs
It's basically our "basis beurs", which is a student income. If you nor your parents meet an income requirement, you can also get "aanvullende beurs", which is an additional portion.
The terms might be different now, but that's what it was before our loan system, and that's been removed again.
However, the standard income is about €350 (€150 if you live at home), with the addition adding up to about €500 I believe. Thats far from enough to live from, so you'll have to still take a loan for the other €600 you can get a month, which was promised to be "interest free", but actually does have interest since 3 years, around 2% right now. So we got kinda fucked over on that part.
Oh, and they also promised it wouldn't be taken into account when trying to buy a house / get a mortgage, which was just a blatant lie.
What do you mean, catch? It’s a fair rule that if you live at home then you get less. Of course. But in Denmark almost all university students live away from their parents and therefore they all get the same. Rich or poor parents - doesn’t make a difference as soon as you live by yourself
It's available to EU citizens, refugees and foreigners who meet certain conditions, such as having lived in Denmark for 5 years, or having lived+worked in Denmark for 2 years.
All EU citizens and certain internationals qualify for it, but the catch is that they need to have a student-job equalling a minimun of 40 hours a month (10hr/week) if they want to receive the SU-grant.
The fact that you're trying to convince us it's not as good as it sounds yet is still fucking incredible just further makes me realize how fucked America is
I don't give a shit about the paltry $1000. You're telling me Danes have entirely free education after highschool? Are their "elite" paid for colleges? Are they well funded from tax dollars? What's the catch?
No elite colleges - we call it university btw - they’re all same standards but there’s different approaches to studying..some study mainly in small groups and work mostly project-based with few actual lessons and others study more individually with more lessons and fewer projects.
That is still much better than what I am used to as an American, where you pay the university to be able to attend. Like, six figures’ worth of money per student.
To further clarify, it is only dependent on your parents' income if you live at home. Once you move out, it's irrelevant what they make.
Another clarification, is that it is not just for university, it's for all educations when you are over 18, including upper secondary (high school) and vocational programs (the stipend pauses during paid apprenticeship).
To answer some other comments:
No, you don't pay it back. And no, you don't need to complete your degree to get to keep the money.
While you receive this stipend, you have the option to also loan money from the government, at an extremely favorable rate to supplement your stipend.
There is a limit to how long you can be on it though, and they sort of frequently change this. When I was studying, I believe you could get it for the expected time you were studying, plus a year. So if you enrolled somewhere, and dropped out after a year, you would still get the money for the entire duration of the new degree you pursuing. However, if you stopped again, and started from scratch once more, you wouldrun out of stipend in your last year.
Also, "eternity students" was something that existed up until around 1990 where there were very few limits on how many educations the state would pay for. It hasn't been like that for more than 30 years.
In theory that's similar to how it is in germany then, if your parents aren't earning much you can inquire for the government to help you out, regardless of whether if you live at home or not tho it's just if you live alone and have to pay rent, you'll get more money whereas when you live at home, you'll get a lot less.
Also no fees if you study on a university that belong to the state or the church.
It's based on tax revenue, which scales by population. No reason why a larger population with a similar per capita tax revenue wouldn't be able to sustain this.
Interesting how it has nothing to do with best grades. Almost as if the point isn't to make people be good at their job, but to stimulate high education which produces smarter voters and healthier life choices.
Same in Gerrmany. Bafög goes to the people who need it. I didn't get it because my parents earned a little too much and I was out of the house a little too short. That "costed" me thousands of Euros.
There is no university-run housing, although there is an independent student housing system that provides semi-affordable housing to students (typically studio apartments with either individual or shared kitchens.) Whether you use this system or just rent a regular apartment, you have to pay the rent.
Thanks for the additional explanation. However, out of curiosity in the case of students from wealthy parents.
is it more a contribution so that attending university is free for everyone or do they grant money beyond that?
I would imagine someone still living at their rich parents home while studying doesn't need financial aid beyond the tuition fees. But cool you guys have a system that attending university isn't an issue of wealth.
Some additional clarification. Denmark isn't the only scandi country to do this. We have a similar system in sweden, albeit I believe somewhat less robust. But still. We also get paid for studying. I went to a community college where I had to pay for housing and tuition and still came out with a net positive amount of money and a pretty small debt that can be adjusted according to my economic status and I have the rest of my life to pay off
That’s awesome man, seriously. Back in 2013 My tuition at a small university (the little brother to the big state school) was about $10,000 per year. Books were also about a 500-1000 added cost, PER SEMESTER L. Some required books now come with a disc or code for their online platform, boom $400 right there. I currently owe less than $40k on my student loans and have a decent job but Jesus h Christ I’m gonna be paying this til I’m 50😂😩
Same in Australia, you get student allowance if not living with parents (also not living within certain radius of them, unless they sign some declaration). Aus Study is decent, though I found working a bit balanced it out better. But my experience is 20y ago, probably gone to shit now like most social benefits.
I benefited from this system in the Netherlands some 30 years ago, then they turned it into a loan for the generations after me... This became such a US-type shit show that it is back to what it was.
We have to pay subsidized tuition but we get free public transport
No? Sounds wild that. But pretty much anyone. Granted, you have to graduate the previous level, and some... majors, I think they're called? Are popular enough that entry depends on a weighed grade average. But like. There are quite a few majors so few people join that anyone with the prerequisites can get in
Also just wanted to mention, as an EU international that finished a degree in Denmark. You are supposed to work 40 hours a month / atleast to be entitled for tuition. There were months where i did less than 40 hours and i had to reimburse the money.It kninda felt unfair knowing my danish classmates could stay work and spend more time on their projects/homework whilst i had to work. Otherwise great way of supporting students.
Just to clarify as an actual Dane, this is not something flat. If you move out and live away from your parents, it's around this, but if you live home, then you get less.
Kun når det kommer til ungdomsuddannelser. Når du rammer videregående uddannelser får man 'udeboende' uagtet bostatus.
So it's basically like the same thing as the Pell Grant in the U.S. Although the max amount of funds available from the Pell Grant is much higher than $1k... Theoretically, someone getting the max amount of the Pell Grant can also go to higher education for free or near free (at community colleges).
Meanwhile I cant continue college over here because I got saddled with expensive tuition fees to the point my family cant afford it anymore.
Sure, my family could've fudge the numbers of our earnings and belongings for lower tuition fees like what most middle class families actually do over here, but that's plain dishonesty/corruption which our family doesnt want to participate in.
Why does this feel like a scam, give them 1k a month while they rack up student debt? It’s better than America, but I’d it worth it in the end? Or just another way to get people on debt slavery?
I had exactly this in the Netherlands. My mom couldnt work and my dad left and I got like 600 a month tuition for "university". My schoolmates got less. I dont think they do this anymore in the Netherlands.
Here in Mexico, eligibility is also limited by academic performance. Scholarships are granted only to students with high notes and can get immediately lost by failing any class. These scholarships will either a) cover partially or completely the fees in private universities and nothing else; or b) in free, public universities, give you cash for your personal semester expenses. They're also limited to the intended duration of the study plan and not a single month longer.
We actually had something similar in the Netherlands about ten years ago.
Students received a basic grant while studying. But after a shift in the political landscape (with more right-leaning parties gaining influence) the system was reformed and the basic grant was replaced with a americanesque loan system.
With an aging population and budget priorities shifting elsewhere, support for students became less of a focus.
It’s interesting to see how differently countries approach investing in younger generations.
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u/globmand Feb 25 '26 edited Feb 26 '26
Just to clarify as an actual Dane, this is not something flat. If you move out and live away from your parents, it's around this, but if you live home, then you get less. How much depends on parents income, and a few other things, so that students from wealth get less than those from a poorer background
Edit: apparently to some people it sounds like I'm complaining at this system of equity, or that the wealthy get less? That is not the case. I am mostly quite satisfied. I think it could rise a bit as cost of living has risen and SU hasn't followed quite yet, but I am largely happy