Dr. Christoph Gwosć

For 28 EHEA countries, the extent of financial inequality among students was first determined with the help of the Gini coefficient. On this measure, there are relatively large differences between countries, but whose determinants are yet unknown. Several simple linear regressions seem to indicate that family-related variables – financial support from the family, students' educational background, and living in the parental home – increase income concentration among student populations significantly, while national public student support reduces it considerably. However, a multiple linear regression model shows that only national public student support has a weakly significant effect, thus superimposing the effects of social origin.

A brief commentary on the situation of university funding at the beginning of 2026

The financing of higher education in Germany involves a complex network of actors and institutions from the private and public sectors. Determining who contributes what to the financing requires considerable research and data processing as part of an in-depth structural analysis. Such an analysis for the year 2023 shows that the private and public sectors in Germany spent a total of around ¤59.806 billion on higher education (excluding research).

Following the outbreak of the war on Ukraine, Europe experienced a strong rise in inflation in 2022/23, which posed and partially continues to pose major challenges for companies, workers, consumers, and governments. Students were also affected by inflation. We take the recent inflation as an opportunity to take a long-term look back at how inflation has affected students in Europe.

The EUROSTUDENT VII – Synopsis of Indicators is the central publication of the EUROSTUDENT project and the result of the collaboration of a European-wide network. It comprises data from student surveys conducted in 25 countries in the European Higher Education Area during the seventh round of the EUROSTUDENT project. Adopting a broad, comparative perspective, the EUROSTUDENT VII – Synopsis of Indicators provides information on students’ socio-economic and study-related backgrounds, their study conditions and experiences, including international mobility, and their living conditions. It aims to inspire policy debates on the topic of the social dimension and lay the ground for further research.