Your child wants to study in France: a parent's guide

France hosts over 400,000 international students and runs a structured welcome system: Campus France (the official agency present in around 140 countries), university international offices, and the CROUS (the state body for student housing, meals and support). Public universities and the grandes écoles are state-regulated, and an enrolled student gets subsidised healthcare, housing help and a protected student status. In practice your child is not on their own: there is an institutional safety net, and almost every procedure has an official .gouv.fr or campusfrance.org page behind it.

Two buckets: tuition and living.

• Tuition: public universities are heavily subsidised. Non-EU students may pay differentiated fees of around 2,770 EUR for a Licence and 3,770 EUR for a Master, but many universities exempt or reduce them. Private schools and grandes écoles charge much more (often 7,000 to 20,000 EUR per year).
• Living: budget roughly 800 to 1,000 EUR per month (more in Paris) for rent, food, transport and phone. Add the CVEC, a compulsory student-life contribution of 105 EUR for 2026-2027, plus health cover (below).

One change to plan for: from 1 July 2026, non-EU students who are not scholarship holders lose access to APL (the housing benefit), so do not count on it. Always confirm the current figures on the official pages before budgeting.

This is usually a parent's biggest worry, and the news is reassuring. Most international students register for free with the French Sécurité sociale étudiante, which reimburses a large share of medical costs. Registration is done online after arrival on the dedicated student health portal. A complementary insurance (mutuelle) is optional and inexpensive if you want fuller coverage. Your child has real medical cover from the start, not a private bill.

Housing options: CROUS student residences (cheapest, apply early), private studios, or shared flats. French landlords usually ask for a guarantor, and a parent living abroad is often refused. The solution many families do not know about is Visale: a free state-backed guarantor (Action Logement) open to students, which landlords accept in place of a family guarantor. It removes the single biggest housing obstacle for a family based outside France. Plan one to two months' rent as a deposit.

Most non-EU students need a long-stay student visa (VLS-TS), applied for through the Études en France procedure. The part that involves you directly is proving sufficient resources, generally about 615 EUR per month for the stay. This proof can be a bank statement, a scholarship, or a guarantor (often the parent) with a letter of financial support and bank documents. In practice many parents simply provide a bank attestation and a support letter. Your child opens a French bank account after arrival, which you can then top up by international transfer.

One thing surprises many parents: once enrolled, your child is treated as an independent adult. Universities will generally not share grades or attendance with you without the student's consent. That is standard French practice, not a brush-off. What you can do: agree a monthly budget, set up an easy way to send money, keep the key documents (passport, visa, insurance) backed up, and check in regularly. If things get hard, a wrong course choice or homesickness, France has structured ways to change direction (réorientation, admission on application) rather than dropping out. You are not powerless from abroad; you are a partner in a system that has a path for most situations.