The world is your oyster, so why not pick one of the cheapest countries to live and study to call your new home?
I’d like to think that if you look up the word “wanderlust,” you will find my picture beside it. For me, there’s nothing more fulfilling than setting out to explore a new place. I love learning about new cultures, touring historical sites, and tasting new cuisines. And as soon as I get back from one trip, I’m already ready to plan the next. I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited a number of countries around the globe, but I’ve also had unique opportunities to live and study in a few countries too. Nothing really compares to the experience of living and studying abroad since you get to experience a new place and culture fully. No matter where you go, that place will always be special to you after you’ve spent an extending amount of time there.
Living and studying abroad definitely does not come cheap, so you should do some research on the cheapest universities in the world for international students before you go. Some of the cheapest university tuition in the world can be found in places like India, Malaysia, and Taiwan, so that’s a good place to start your search. It gets even better than that though. There is a number of free universities in Europe for international students depending on whether you live within or outside the European Union. For example, Spain offers free higher education for any EU citizens, while it’s free for anyone in the Czech Republic as long as speaks the language. Don’t fret if you don’t speak anything but English since there are also numerous cheap universities in Europe that teach in English. If you’ve already finished an undergrad program, and you think that you missed out on a great opportunity, it’s not too late. Italy, France, and Spain are all contenders for the cheapest country to study for a masters degree. You can dig deeper into the educational programs in some of these countries with our list of the easiest and cheapest countries to study abroad. Economies change, so check out what the cheapest countries to live and study were just a few years ago, as well.
The idea of studying abroad is really interesting and exciting. However, as the title of this article suggests, today we will be talking about the cheapest options you have for this specific purpose. Of course, we are not going to name just a few countries where it’s merely cheap to study because then your academic qualification might not be having the credibility in the international market. Instead, we will talk about the few countries where education and the cost of living are cheap, and where you do not have to compromise with your academic credibility. So basically we will be trying to combine the best of both worlds. To find the countries with low education costs and a reasonably cheap cost of living, we turned to websites such as Top Universities, MBA Crystal Ball, Masters Portal and World University Rankings as well as Google.
When it came down to ranking, we went with the cost of living index. In keeping with the theme of this article, which is inexpensive education and living, we figured the cost of living index is the way to go. We also made sure that all the countries that made it into the list had internationally recognized educational systems, but we could only rank them based on their cost of living. The cheaper a country is to live according to the latest cost of living index, the higher it has been placed on the list. You can find the most recent cost of living index at Numbeo. This index is relative to New York City, so basically for New York City, the index should be 100 (%). Now if a country has a cost of living index of 70(%) that means on average you will have to pay 30(%) less to live there compared to NYC.
Let’s dive right into the list of 15 cheapest countries to live and study.