Linked to the previous section on access to higher education, financial support for refugee students and researchers may include scholarship programmes, fee waivers, support for living costs and cost of study, free accommodation in university facilities, etc.

Many of the initiatives in the EUA’s Refugees Welcome Map strive to offer some financial support to refugee students and/or researchers, often from their core university budgets. Financial support at national level – where this is already in place in a few member states – or even at European level could help to sustain and broaden these measures.

As of 2015, refugees have been an explicit priority group of the Erasmus+ programme, yet so far not as direct beneficiaries (except through the OLS online language learning licences). In its recommendations on the future of the Erasmus+ programme, EUA suggests to set up a specific support action for refugee students in Europe, including full-time scholarship support (Recommendation 8). For further information, please click here.

The following initiatives mostly offer financial support as part of a broader set of activities and, in some cases, have come up with innovative approaches to raise funds for refugees.

Good Practice

Démocratie & Entraide en Syrie, Ghosn Zeitoun (FR)

University of Poitiers (FR)

University of Porto & Global Platform 4 Syrian Students (PT)

C.A.P. - Centre for lifelong learning at University of Bari (IT)

Complutense University of Madrid (ES)

LCC International University (LT)

University of Bradford (UK)