In this session, Triin Lauri, Assistant Professor at Tallinn University, and Kaire Põder, Professor at Estonian Business School, presented their research that focussed on the determinants of student drop-out in different European countries. By using four most extreme cases of student funding - Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, and the Netherlands - they explained how the degree to which public financial student support buffers social disadvantages in mitigating student dropout varies across countries depending on how the systems of higher education, tuition fees and subsidies are organized.