Free tuition

Imagine you want to study in Iceland. Tiktok says Háskóli Íslands has free tuition!

First you pay the fee to apply. That’s about 7,500 krónur. You have to apply with documentation from your previous institution, and requestion that documentation will cost maybe another 5000kr because you have to have the delivery expedited.

You’ve been accepted. Hooray! That’s 75,000 krónur to register. You must pay this quickly so you won’t lose your place.

You have to apply for a student residence permit next. You have to get or renew a passport, get an extra passport photo, get a federal criminal record certificate, and pay for health insurance. Getting all of that together before the June 1 deadline to send in your application will take anywhere from 25,000-50,000 krónur, depending on your country of origin and any fees appended, as well as Sjóvá’s assessment of your health.

You also discover that TikTok was absolutely lying, because you need to demonstrate secure means of financial support. You have to have at least 2,970,864 krónur in the bank after all of these fees, and you need to pay for a notarized statement. You can’t have this in other assets and you have to make a new account with your bank that allows currency to be show in dollars or euros because your home currency isn’t accepted as legal tender by the Central Bank. That isn't free by any stretch of the imagination - but you're invested now. Let's do this.

Then you need to pay 16,000 for the privilege of mailing these documents in. Did I say 16,000? It’s more than that, actually, because you have to pay extra to send your application as expedited registered mail.

You have saved about three million to demonstrate secure support. You have also paid 82,500 krónur to the university, 40,000 krónur to get your documents in order, 16,000 krónur to Útlendingastofnun, and another 7,500 krónur to send insured, expedited mail. That is a cost of 3,146,000 krónur just to be able to safely apply. But you really want to go to Iceland. Maybe you're a geologist by trade, or you have training in manuscript studies, or you're just interested in having a little adventure in your early 20s, learning at a highly ranked university in a beautiful country at the top of the world. You grit your teeth and pay.

After Útlendingastofnun takes an alarmingly long time to get back to you, you fly to Iceland. The tickets cost anywhere from 40,000 to 350,000 krónur. If you live outside Europe or North America or are from a country that needs a visa to travel to Iceland, it’s probably on the higher end, because you can’t be granted a travel visa until Útlendingastofnun approves your permit, and thus you‘ll have to buy the plane ticket with zero notice (and of course you need to pay the fee for the visa).

You land in Reykjavík. Reykjavík is one of the most expensive cities in the world. You already paid 150,000 krónur for a deposit on a shared apartment. Your roommates are awful freaks, but the landlord won’t give the deposit back if you’re there for less than a year, so here you sit. You lose eligibility for húsnæðisbætur because one of your roommates starts working full-time. You have to pay an exorbitant fee for a "medical exam" because Iceland for some reason rejected the medical exam you paid for in your home country. You have lab fees and you need to buy textbooks. The clothes you bought are not warm enough, so you have to buy a winter coat.

You don’t get on the national health insurance system for six months. Medications that were cheap or even free to you at home now cost tens of thousands. Even after you get on the national health insurance system, you discover the medication you take does not have a generic, and you must pay full price every time.

You can work, yes, but only 22 hours a week, and how do you fit that in with your class schedule? It’s a moot point anyways – Útlendingastofnun has changed processing times for student residence permits from 1-2 weeks to 4-8, and no one hiring for a minimum wage job is going to wait two months for your permit to come in. In between classes, you starve.

That nearly three million krónur you have in the bank looks juicy enough to pay rent, right? Well, you can’t touch it, because you have to show that amount whenever you renew your visa. You are legally barred from taking out student loans. You can’t even get a credit card. You can’t go to VIRK if the stress of being impoverished and studying at a high level overwhelms you. You eat from the freedges and finally get a job at Subway. You live on less than 215,000 krónur a month, but at least now you can afford to buy vegetables. Your laptop breaks and you have to pay for the replacement in full upfront because you're not allowed to pay for it with Netgiró.

When you go to renew your student residence permit, you discover to your shock that Útlendingastofnun raises the minimum secure support amount by 10,000 a month three days before the renewal due date, so you have to quickly borrow money from friends. You still have to pay 16,000 krónur. You can’t go home while your renewal is processing because you’re afraid to travel on an expired residence permit, so you have to miss your sister’s wedding – she will be angry at you for the rest of both of your lives. Útlendingastofnun takes 120 days to tell you that they lost half your paperwork and you need to resubmit it. They act like this is your fault.

You see an article that says international students are gaming the system because studying in Iceland is free.

You laugh.

Colin Fisher (hán) is a doctoral student at Háskóli Íslands.