Studying an MBA or a Master can come at a considerable cost. Not only tuition fees must be taken into account but also cost of living, opportunity costs for salaries lost during the course of your studies and costs for materials, books and other related allowances. Most students try to find some form of funding that combines personal savings, family funds and assistance from a bank loan. There are essentially four sources for funding your postgraduate studies: personal funds, scholarships, loans and part-time employment. Regardless of the country in which you wish to study, your funding will have to come from one of these sources. If your savings don’t cover all costs involved in your studies, or you simply don’t want to raid your entire bank account for it, you will have to rely on external funding. We are summarizing some of the more popular options below:

Scholarships are the best way to give your study budget a boost – they can be full scholarships or partial ones. Some even award an allowance in addition to covering the costs for tuition fees and living. Since they don’t have to be re-paid, it is certainly the most desirable way to fund your studies. There are literally thousands of scholarships available to students each year and in order to provide comprehensive information on the topic, we have outlined more detailed information and sources for scholarships in our Scholarships information section.

Taking up a student loan for postgraduate study is common practice in the US and their government has long introduced low-interest loan policies to enable students to pay for their course of study locally or abroad. Repayment of the loan amount and interest can often be deferred until after graduation from a program. In recent years, the private sector has also started offering loans to students wishing to study at home or abroad and companies such as the Access Group (http://www.accessgroup.org/), Sallie Mae (www.salliemae.com) and Chela Educational Funding (www.chelastudentloans.org) provide aspiring students with unsecured, credit-based funds for their tuition fees, cost of living and material allowances. With tuition fees being the norm in most countries, the demand for student loans has become a global matter. Students in the UK have been eligible for student loans since 1990, and by now an entire generation of students have completed their course of study with the help of private or government student loans.

Increasingly, international banks, such as HSBC, ABN AMRO, Citibank or Barclays offer special loan programs for students, helping aspiring graduates meet their financial obligations while studying. These typically have low interest rates, but are tied to either collateral or a set of obligations. In addition to these options, there are a number of specific loan schemes for a particular course of study, such as the Association of MBAs (AMBA) Loan Scheme in the UK, which is offered in conjunction with NatWest bank and is designed to support MBA students financially. In this loan scheme a student can borrow ‘up to two thirds of their pre-course annual salary plus tuition fees for each year of full-time study’. To secure this loan you will have to have resided in the UK for a minimum of three years and have a certain amount of relevant work experience. More information on this scheme on http://mbaguide.mbaworld.com/content/mbaloan/index.html.

Many banks provide professional study loans offered to postgraduate students studying for a professional qualification such as law, medicine, dentistry, pharmacology and other subjects. Before you consider a bank loan to bridge any funding gap, you should consider all other options, scholarships, family funds or sponsorships to find the best option for you. If you decide to apply for a loan to finance your planned degree, consider the following factors before signing on the dotted line:

Sponsorship:

Some universities and business schools offer interesting opportunities that include part-time teaching or research to mitigate tuition fees but eligibilities are often restricted to students enrolled in a research program or those who have already studied at the institution for a previous degree. Increasingly, countries open to international student mobility are easing their immigration legislation to allow students to engage in some type of work during their studies. In the UK and Australia, governments now promote the involvement of international students in the local job-market, allowing student to work up to 20 hours a week during term time and a full week during vacations. For more details on this visit the respective governmental sites at www.workpermits.gov.uk and http://www.immi.gov.au/. Before you consider part-time work during your studies make sure your course load allows for working on the side. Many MBA programs, for example, are so intense in content and workload that a part-time job may not be possible throughout your course of study. There are numerous options available to assist you in your financial planning and support you during the course of study you have chosen – it is, however, important to plan the financial side as carefully as you plan your application to a program.