European universities are ~free for Europeans. They charge significant fees to non-EU students. Obviously it depends on the country/university, but it would be cheaper for someone to go to their local state university in the US than to a European one. However, it may be cheaper to be in a top-flight EU university than an Ivy League US one - I haven't checked the numbers.
I'm an Israeli and I am studying at the best Technical University in Austria (TUWien).
Tuition is 742 Euros per year. Germany is similar, and I'm pretty sure France and the vast majority (if not all) of continental Europe is somewhere in that ballpark too.
The UK is more expensive, I'm not sure about Ireland.
I had a lot of friends from asian countries in my university (about 10% foreign students there) and they paid exactly the same as me. They even got the 40% aid from the government on apartment rent as students...
The only foreign students who paid a lot of money at my university were exchange students from the us who paid their normal tuition to the american university and studied in my university for a year... In exchange, some of the french students did the same, paid the almost free tuition in france and studied in the american university for a year...
A cousin of mine got a Master's in Germany and only paid the local fee which was something like the equivalent of $800USD per year at the time. The catch is that you have to know German. She took a 10 month crash course in German at a German community college before doing the Master's. It seemed like quite a bargain, if you're into Germany.
How long ago was this? What was the Masters in? I know CS and Comp Ling Masters courses are taught mostly to entirely in English, and it's not hard to find physical science Masters through English in German speaking countries. The Nordic countries ditto, but for humanities degrees as well.
