Tuition fees and other study costs have increased in recent years. While some students say that they can make do with 400 euros per month, others spend twice as much.
Tuition fees
Around 30,000 people applied to universities in Lithuania this year. More than 22,000 were offered places and 13,600 were eligible for state funding.
The government created 4,000 additional fully-funded study places in 2020, but around 3,000 of them have not been filled, as fewer candidates than expected met academic requirements.
“The share of students who pay for their education is decreasing every year. Currently, around 30 percent of students pay tuition fees,” said Andrius Zalitis, an adviser to the Lithuanian education minister.
“This year, only those who did not meet the minimum academic criteria will have to pay for their studies,” he added.
But the tuition fees these students pay are growing every year. According to Zalaitis, they depend on resources that go into teaching.
“For example, a professor that teaches social sciences or humanities could lecture 200 students at once,” he said. “But in arts, education must be individual or organised in small groups.”
Currently, university courses in Lithuania are divided into eight categories according to the price. Programmes in the first group, that includes history, philosophy, religion, culture, sociology, politics, and journalism, charge 1,669 euros per year in tuition. Piloting course is the most expensive and costs 15,234 euros per year.
“Studies get more expensive because life gets more expensive. The increase [in tuition fees] should not be dramatised. We cannot freeze higher education and its funding," said Zalaitis.
Accommodation costs
Many students come to the city from smaller towns and villages and must decide where to live. University dorms are among the cheapest options. They could cost as little as 100 euros per month, but students say that you get what you pay for.
“My room was on the 16th floor […]. It was filthy and disheveled. There were cockroaches, plumbing was broken, we could not flush the toilet,” Tadas Paškevičius, a politics student at Vilnius University, shared.
Paškevičius survived in the dorm for half a year before deciding to move to a rented flat. His one-room apartment was 230 euros a month, plus 70 euros for utilities.
Sharing an apartment is often cheaper, however. Paškevičius is planning to move in with a friend. He will pay 200 euros per month, without utilities, for a room in a shared flat.
But he added that finding accommodation is not always easy, because many landlords avoid renting to students.
Arnoldas Antanavičius, a real estate analyst at Realdata, said, however, that renting a flat as a student was becoming easier due to higher supply.
According to him, the cheapest room could cost around 180 euros per month, but most students pay between 230 and 250 euros. More expensive rooms closer to the city centre could cost around 300 euros per month.
Antanavičius also noted that rents decreased during the coronavirus pandemic and were currently 10 percent lower than last autumn.
Food costs
Students spend almost as much on food as on rent. Financial expert Odeta Bložienė said that new students were often surprised by how much food costs.
“Surveys show that students are mostly surprised by how much they have to spend on food,” Bložienė said.
Before moving out of their parents’ home, students are used to not paying for food. But when they become independent, young adults find that food and accommodation constitute a major part of their monthly expenditure.
Student budgets also include transportation costs, clothes, and parties. On average, they spend 500–600 euros per month. Parties and other entertainment cost around 100 euros per month, so the most frugal could survive on 400 euros. But many students calculate that they need twice as much if they want to have a comfortable life.
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