Depends on the subject you want to study - as the govt pays for education the policymakers influence the course sizes to funnel students towards subjects they d

Depends on the subject you want to study - as the govt pays for education the policymakers influence the course sizes to funnel students towards subjects they deem beneficial. It can be difficult to get in, sometimes too much so, people try multiple times. But the education and the degrees themselves in return are very high quality - many universities in the UK take in almost everyone and the degrees don't really teach the students that much. There are almost no private colleges in Finland so I haven't seen the phenomenon you describe.