Estonia: 75 Million EEK to Brings Students Back to University

With an unemployment rate that keeps registering constant increases, the Estonian Ministry of Education decided to start a new programme on incentives for bringing back to their careers people who in the past years left unfinished their higher education curricula.

“Indeed – now that times are difficult on the labour market, the State will create an option to continue one’s studies for those who left the university during the period of economic growth,” declared the Minister of Education and Science Tõnis Lukas explaining that the initiative should be able to offer up to 800 people the possibility to complete their formerly disrupted studies.

The funds from the programme, which is expected to run between 2010 and 2013 and to cost some 75 million roons, are taken both from the Estonian State and the European Social Fund that made available a total sum of 71.25 million kroons.

In the intention of the Minstry, the programme will allow people who have been enrolled in higher education studies between the academic year 2003/4 and 2008/9 and have less than half of their curricula to be completed, the opportunity to finish their studies without paying any tuition fee.