Start-up Nation: pointing students to college options abroad

With the points for courses such as medicine, dentistry and law climbing inexorably and the cost of attending college in Ireland increasing each year, more students are looking to the continent for third-level courses with accessible entry requirements.

Enter EUNiCAS, a centralised European universities application support service. The website is the brainchild of Guy Flouch, who spent 20 years working in senior student recruitment roles for third-level institutions. "While working in third-level education in Ireland and internationally," Flouch says, "it became clear there was a wider range of programmes available through English than people knew about."

Through these roles, he assisted a growing number of students from Ireland and Britain who were seeking to apply to European colleges to avail of cheaper courses, wider entry criteria, locations with a lower cost of living and international experience.

“Furthermore,” he adds, “the points for courses like medicine and dentistry are lower on the continent and many universities abroad are ranked higher than UCD and TCD.”

There are four million students who travel to another country for education every year, according to Flouch, and that figure does not include students taking part in Erasmus programmes.

[CROSSHEAD] Irish studying abroad
[/CROSSHEAD]According to data published by Eurostat last month, 24,700 Irish people, or 13 per cent of the Irish student population, were enrolled in a third-level course in another European country in 2010.

Flouch got a feasibility study from Enterprise Ireland’s High Potential Start-Up Unit (HPSU).

“This required me to spend a few months in Europe talking to different universities. I also talked to students in Britain and Ireland and conducted a big survey.”

Some 800 programmes are taught through English across Europe, according to Flouch.

These include degrees in engineering, economics, hospitality management, biochemistry, veterinary medicine, pharmacy, software development, aeronautical science and business administration.

Flouch says the number of programmes taught through English in European universities increased as demand and points for courses in Ireland and Britain also increased.

The fees for college courses on the continent also remained substantially lower than those charged by universities in Britain and Ireland.

Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland offer free tuition for EU students on all undergraduate and some masters and PhD programmes. In the Netherlands, students pay around €1,700 per year, while state universities in Austria, Germany and Switzerland charge under €1,500, much less than the €2,250 registration fee required by Irish colleges.

The site does not charge universities for listing programmes on its database. Nor does it charge students to search the various programmes available.

“If they want help with applying to the programmes, they pay a €28 registration fee and we help them. We make sure the forms are filled out correctly and that their application is submitted on time. We will help them with applications for up to eight different courses.”

Flouch decided to target the site at students in the final year of secondary school in Britain as well as Ireland, as Britain has a very similar, albeit much larger market.

“Some 600,000 secondary school students graduate in the UK each year, and 70,000 graduate in Ireland so the market is large.”

[CROSSHEAD] Website visitors
[/CROSSHEAD]As a result, he acquired a co.uk website address as well as a .ie domain name. The two sites currently receive between 12,000 and 13,000 visitors each month.

“We visit a lot of schools and meet a lot of guidance counsellors to promote the business. We still need to push it further. We are relying on student networks to promote it too.”

Two years ago, students were applying for courses in European universities in case they didn’t get their preferred college course at home, Flouch says.

Now they are applying to gain experience abroad.

“The employment market is now a global one. Employers are looking for people with international experience and studying abroad gives them a career edge.”