Spain's student grants: what they pay, and what studying away from home really costs

Miriam González tells the story of her grants often. She studied abroad on scholarships, and at the launch of Democracia 21 she said she owes the country that trained her a "deuda monumental", a monumental debt. The launch speech adds that the same girl today would struggle, because grants no longer stretch. That claim can be checked, and it deserves to be, since grants are the most direct tool Spain has for social mobility at the moment a young person decides whether to study.

What the grant pays

The rules for the 2026–27 year are in Royal Decree 179/2026, published in the BOE on 12 March. A university student from a family below the thresholds gets free tuition for credits taken for the first time. On top of that come fixed amounts: €1,700 if family income is below the lowest threshold, €2,700 if the student lives away from the family home during the course, capped at what the accommodation actually costs, and €50 to €125 for an average mark of 8 or more. Whatever is left in the budget after the fixed amounts is shared out as a variable amount of at least €60, larger for lower incomes and higher marks.

For a family of four, the €1,700 requires an income between €22,107 and €23,286 (each call fixes the exact figure), and the residence and variable amounts require less than €38,242. The government puts the budget at €2,559 million, up from €2,544 million, for about a million students, and says spending has risen by more than €1,000 million since 2018. This year the income thresholds were left where they were, and the wealth thresholds went up about 10%.

So the poorest student who moves to another city receives tuition plus €4,400 in fixed cash, plus the variable part. That residence amount has risen fast: EsadeEcPol notes it was €1,600 in 2021–22.

What studying away costs

Vozpópuli worked out in September what a ten-month year at a public university in Madrid costs a student from outside the city, using data on student residences, food and transport. Living costs alone came to between €1,260 and €1,510 a month, €12,600 to €15,100 for the year, with residences averaging €950 to €1,050 a month. Add tuition and the total is €13,615 to €16,341.

Against that, €4,400 covers roughly a third. The variable amount adds something, but nothing close to the gap. A student from a family on €23,000 a year can only go if the family finds another €8,000 to €10,000, or if the student works, or chooses a university within reach of home. That is what "grants that no longer stretch" means in practice: they open the door to those who can live with their parents, and much less to those who would have to move.

Who keeps the grant

The best picture of who gets the grant and what happens next comes from EsadeEcPol's October 2025 study by Lucía Cobreros and José Montalbán Castilla, based on ministry microdata for public universities in 2021–22. The grant reached about 309,000 undergraduates, 23.8% of the total, and close to 40% in Extremadura or the Canary Islands. Grant holders come from families with less education, are more often women, and are less likely to choose the hardest degrees: 28% of them, against 40% of other students.

From the second year a student must pass a minimum share of the credits enrolled: 65% in sciences, 90% in social sciences. This is where the system bites the students it is meant to help. Among grant holders with the lowest entry marks, 61% lose the grant after the first year, 80% in engineering and architecture, against 25% of those with the best marks. Dropout among the weaker grant holders reaches 19.4%, against 1.3% for the strongest.

The strongest evidence argues for keeping the conditions. José Montalbán's study in The Economic Journal used a Spanish reform and sharp eligibility cut-offs at a large university. With academic requirements as soft as those of most national grant schemes, the grant had no measurable effect on results, completion or dropout. With more demanding requirements, the same money raised attendance at final exams, marks and degree completion. EsadeEcPol adds that Spain has only two robust evaluations of its grants, Montalbán's and AIReF's 2019 spending review, both covering the early 2010s.

A grant that works as a contract

The left is right that a grant has to cover what studying really costs, a room in Madrid or Barcelona included, or university stays easiest for those who can live at home. Amartya Sen's question, what a person can actually do, applies literally: a right to a place you cannot afford to reach is a weak right. The market-liberal tradition is right that public money should come with conditions and results, and the Spanish evidence supports it: soft conditions buy nothing.

What fits neither camp is a grant designed as a contract, with obligations on both sides. The State pays the real cost: a residence amount tied to the student-housing cost of the university's city, updated each year, so a student in Madrid and one in Badajoz both get what it takes to live there. The student meets demanding conditions. Between the two sits a first-year safety step. A student who falls short gets a warning year with compulsory tutoring and a partial grant, building on the partial amounts this year's decree already allows for students on 48 to 59 credits, before the money stops. Losing 61% of the most fragile grant holders in one go wastes what was invested in their first year.

Then the design gets tested, as Karl Popper would have it: piece by piece. The ministry already holds the microdata EsadeEcPol used. The income thresholds create natural experiments every year; AIReF can estimate, call after call, what each euro of residence money does to enrolment, completion and the choice of harder degrees, and publish it. A grant that is evaluated every year can be defended in every budget, and a student who signs the contract knows the State will keep its side.