[tharkun__]

That is the same in Germany. There's something called the "BAföG" which is a student loan.

"Bundesausbildungsförderungsgesetz" which is just the name of the law but shortened to "BAföG" to refer to the loan itself. You "apply for BAföG".

However this is a loan directly from the government and its meant to pay for housing and food and such. If you get it you also get priority in student housing for example. Of course there is still not enough student housing in most universities and that means if you don't get BAföG you have to sort out paying for housing yourself and getting it on the open market and even if you do get BAföG you might still need to. So in most university cities there's also a lot of cheaper housing geared towards students and living together ("Wohngemeinschaft").

There's an eternal debate over how much BAföG is enough and who should get how much. It's tied to your parents' income basically (unless you worked before, which basically would mostly apply to people that did an "Ausbildung" i.e. were in the vocational system before and have had their own income but now want to go to university.

You have a certain period after leaving university to pay it back and if you pay it back in one shot (or maybe a few larger payments IIRC) then you have to pay back less.

    In 2012, 24% of all students in Germany received financial support via BAföG

Also, because there's not the whole "everyone wants to go to Harvard" going on its much more likely that you can live at home and still go to university. Many students would rather go work on the side and move out though I would venture.