Pick two study destinations and compare them on what is decided, who decides it, and where we have read it at the authority. This tool publishes no cost figures: those were withdrawn because they named no publisher and carried no date, and the full reason is set out below.
What changed in this comparison, and why
This tool used to compare twenty countries across five rows of figures: tuition bands, monthly living costs, post-study work durations, English-taught provision and work-hour limits. Those figures have been withdrawn.
They were withdrawn because not one of them named a publisher, carried a reference period, or said when it had last been checked. They had been assembled at some point from somewhere, and after that there was no way for a reader, or for us, to tell whether any individual cell was still true. A table of a hundred cells in that condition is not a small problem: it is a hundred separate claims, each of which somebody might plan around.
The figures also survived a site wide audit of money figures earlier the same day, which swept the readable text of every page and found and corrected six wrong figures and withdrew sixty one unsourced ones. This dataset was missed because it does not live in the text. It lives inside the page as data, and only becomes visible when a reader selects two countries. That is worth recording as a lesson: a sweep of what a page says will not find what a page holds.
What the comparison carries now
Five rows, chosen because they do not decay. Who sets the tuition figure and how to get it. Whether this site holds a dated, sourced page on that country, with a link if it does and an honest statement of the gap if it does not. What the living cost position actually is, which is that no government publishes such a figure. Who decides the route after study. And the work rule, stated only for the countries where we have read it at the national authority and can say on what date.
Six of the twenty carry a work rule on that basis. The other fourteen say plainly that we have not read it. That asymmetry is the point rather than an embarrassment: it shows you exactly where our knowledge ends, which a uniform looking table never does.
The five ways a comparison table misleads
The rule this site works to. A figure is published only where it has a named publisher, a reference period and a visible statement of the date it was read. Anything else is withdrawn with an explanation rather than quietly softened. That is why several pages here now say we do not know, and why the ones that do carry figures link straight to the body that issued them.
How to compare properly
Compare few things, not many
Twenty countries cannot be held in mind at once, and a table that invites you to try is encouraging a bad decision. Reduce to at most four before you compare anything in detail, using the constraints that eliminate rather than the qualities that attract.
Compare on what is decided, not on what is advertised
Recognition of your existing qualification, whether a permission route exists for someone in your position, and the language the teaching and examination actually happen in are all decided by named bodies who will answer a written question. Cost, reputation and atmosphere are advertised. The decided things eliminate; the advertised things persuade.
Ask the same question of every candidate
The value of a comparison is that the question is held constant. If you ask one institution about fees and another about scholarships, you have not compared anything. Write the five questions once, send the same five to each, and put the answers side by side.
Keep the answers, with dates
Record what you were told, by whom and when. A year later this is the only thing that lets you tell whether a rule changed or you misremembered, and it is the difference between a plan you can audit and a plan you have to redo.
Why we do not rank countries
A ranking is a set of weights applied to a set of measures, and both belong to whoever made it. Presented as a result about you, it quietly substitutes somebody else priorities for yours. That is the mechanism by which a great many people end up somewhere that suited the ranker, and it is why nothing here produces an ordered list.
It is also why nothing on this site earns anything from where you apply. A comparison that pointed at whoever paid the most would be indistinguishable, from the outside, from one that pointed at the best fit. The only way to make that distinction visible is to have nothing to gain, and to say so.
Before you leave this page
- Pick at most four countries before comparing anything
- For each, ask who sets the tuition figure and get it in writing
- Check whether we hold a dated page for that country, and read it if so
- Treat any figure without a publisher and a date as unverified
- Reject any figure sourced to an agent, recruiter or listing business
- Ask the national authority directly about work and post-study rules
- Estimate living costs from your own spending, not from a published band
- Write down which single requirement would disqualify you in each country
- Note where we have stated a gap, and go and fill it at the source
- Recheck anything that must be exact, at the publisher, before you rely on it
Where to go next
- The study destinations map
- How to choose a study destination
- Choosing a country, constraints first
- What studying abroad actually costs
- Proof of funds, explained
- Student visa requirements
- Working while studying, the rules by country
- How education agents earn
- How we research and what we refuse to publish
- Studying in English, and what that phrase hides
- Admission chances estimator
- College cost calculator
