Support loans from the Icelandic Student Loans Fund are not set to increase and will remain around ISK 100,000 (USD 780) per month for individuals, according to Morgunbladid sources. A student body representative said that the unchanged loan figure will start forcing students out of studying and onto unemployment benefit because their additional revenue raising options are now few-to-none. The Minister for Education is on record describing the situation as “serious”. Read the full story

Evidence has come to light that some Norwegian university students are cheating the system. It would appear that the students are collecting student aid they are not entitled to. The news comes in the wake of a scandal facing Norwegian ex-parliament members accused of tweaking their pension benefits.

The same newspaper that broke the MP pension story, Dagsavisen, also discovered that university students are using fake addresses to claim they are living independent of their parents. By living alone, the students are Read the full story

Sweden’s famously free tertiary level education may no longer be free for all, with foreigners outside of the EU soon having to pay tuition fees, according to suggestions from the government.

Higher education minister Lars Leijonborg told the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper that the government is now in agreement that students from outside the EU, excluding Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein (the EEA countries), should pay to study at state universities in the country.

“Our primary argument is that it is unwise of a country not to benefit from a payment system which obviously exists. Why should these students pay money to American or British universities, but not to Swedish [ones]?” Leijonborg explained to SvD.

Fees might be based on the costs incurred by the individual universities themselves but a stipend system might be introduced to help students lacking sufficient funds to pay tuition.

A bill which includes the proposal is to be presented in the autumn on how university-level international exchanges can be increased and the new system would be implemented on January 1st, 2010, at the latest.

Presently about 13,000 foreign students study at Swedish universities on their own initiative rather than as a part of an organized exchange programme, many of them are Asian men pursuing technical degrees.

But Elin Rosenberg, chair of the Swedish association of student unions fears that it might be a precursor leading to the introduction of fees for Swedish students as well. It might also discourage foreigners from choosing Sweden as their preferred place of study.

According to reporters for The Local, a Swedish newspaper, foreign students studying at universities in Sweden have been targeted by fraudsters. Students from abroad have been tricked out of their identities and had products bought in their name.

Waseem Akhtar, a student from Pakistan, was studying at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm (KTH) to become an IT engineer when he encountered the fraudsters. He had been in Sweden for just a few months when he received a false notification from the Tax Authority (Skatteverket) in the mail, claiming he had moved.

Luckily, Akhtar took note of the notice and contacted the Skatteverket and rectified the change, but in the meantime the new Visa card he had ordered had disappeared.

“How can Skatteverket change my address without checking with me? I did not think that anything could go wrong with the Swedish system,” Akhtar said.

Unfortunately something had gone wrong, as Akhtar began receiving notifications in the mail of purchases he had not made. The Swedish Enforcement Authority (Kronofogdemyndigheten) also sent him notices of unpaid bills. In total, Akhtar now owes more than 50,000 kronor (USD 8,250) for goods he never authorised.

Unfortunately there is very little the students can do, particularly if the police are unable to locate the fraudsters. A spokesperson for Skatteverket advised students to contact companies directly about the unauthorised purchases as soon as possible.