The guide
Italy or United Arab Emirates?
The same questions asked of both, in the same order, with what each one costs you level with what it gives you. Neither column is a recommendation — the last row is the one to read twice.
First
Italy
Second
United Arab Emirates
In one line
The cheapest realistic route into Western Europe for a family without money — tuition scales to income, and regional scholarships pay you to study.
Western universities' campuses and a tax-free job market, close to home — with residence tied to your employer.
What only this place gives you
Fees are calculated from family income (the ISEE assessment), and DSU regional scholarships cover tuition, a living grant, housing and meals for students below an income threshold — a package that exists nowhere else in Europe at this scale.
NYU Abu Dhabi admits internationally and meets full financial need, and it sits three hours from Almaty. A US-style liberal-arts education at that price, in this region, exists nowhere else.
What is good here
- Income-scaled tuition plus DSU scholarships: for a modest-income family this can be the cheapest option on the entire list, cheaper than staying home.
- Medicine taught in English, entered through the IMAT exam — one of the few honest routes into European medicine for an international student.
- Design, architecture and fashion at Politecnico and the Milan schools, sitting inside the industry itself.
- EU degree, EU mobility afterwards, and a 12-month post-study residence permit to find work.
- Cost of living outside Milan is genuinely low by Western European standards.
- Branch campuses of established Western universities award the same degree as the home institution.
- NYUAD's need-based aid can cover essentially the whole cost for admitted international students.
- No income tax, and a fast-growing corporate and startup market that hires in English.
- Three hours from home: visits, family and flights are affordable in a way that the US and Canada never are.
- Large Russian-speaking and Central Asian communities already established.
What it costs you
- Italian is essential for daily life and for most jobs; English-taught degrees do not change that once you step off campus.
- Bureaucracy is slow and document-heavy — the permesso di soggiorno process is a rite of passage, not an anecdote.
- Graduate salaries and the domestic job market are weak compared to Germany or the Netherlands; many graduates leave to work.
- DSU scholarships are administered per region with different rules, deadlines and reliability — the paperwork is the actual hurdle.
- University structures are old-fashioned: large lectures, oral exams, little pastoral support.
- Housing in Milan is expensive and competitive, closer to a northern European capital than to the rest of Italy.
- Residence is tied to your employer — losing the job starts a countdown to leaving the country.
- Living costs, especially housing and schooling, are high and rising.
- There is no route to citizenship and only a narrow one to long-term residence: this is a place to work, not usually to settle permanently.
- Summer heat makes months of the year genuinely difficult, and outdoor life stops.
- Social and legal norms differ sharply from Europe; the rules are enforced and worth reading before you go.
- Outside a few institutions, research depth is thin — a PhD ambition is better served elsewhere.
Money — how paying for it works
Tuition depends on assessed family income, and can fall to nothing. Add a DSU grant and the state effectively pays you to study. The catch is entirely in the paperwork: certified, translated income documents, on time, per region.
Branch-campus tuition matches Western prices, with the striking exception of aid-rich NYUAD. Salaries are untaxed, which changes the arithmetic once you are working.
Getting in — what they weigh
Programme-specific: TOLC entrance tests for many degrees, IMAT for English-taught medicine, portfolio for design. Grades matter, personal essays barely exist. Compass evaluates Italian programmes deterministically, including the DSU and financial-fit picture.
Branch campuses apply their home institution's standards; NYUAD is highly selective and US-style. Local universities are grades-and-tests driven. Compass models UAE admissions, including the medicine track.
After you graduate
A 12-month permit to look for work after graduating, and EU-wide mobility with the degree. Working in Italy itself is the harder half — the language and the market both bite.
Work visas are employer-sponsored, with newer long-term 'golden' residence for high earners and some graduates. Predictable while employed, precarious when not.
Post-study work rules are set by politics and change. Check the rule for your own graduation year before you plan around it.
Strongest fields here
- Arts & Design
- Engineering
- Business & Economics
- Medicine & Health
- Humanities & Social Sciences
- Business & Economics
- Engineering
- Computer Science
- Medicine & Health
This suits you if…
Money is the binding constraint, you are willing to learn Italian, and you want design, architecture, engineering or medicine.
You want a Western degree without leaving the region, or you are aiming at NYUAD's aid, or you want to start earning quickly in a tax-free market.
Look elsewhere if…
You need high graduate earnings immediately, or you cannot handle administrative uncertainty. Both will make you miserable here.
You want to emigrate permanently or build an academic research career. The residence model and the research depth both point elsewhere.