> Its common here in the US to have a part time job to pay for your expenses. Is it not the case in sweden?
It's not particularly common, no. You might work a month or two during the summer breaks, perhaps.
As mentioned, tuition itself is free, but students still need to pay basic living costs. In order to allow students to focus on their studies, students receive financial aid towards these costs while studying. Pretty much everybody is covered for this aid. Part of it is "free" (i.e., a grant that you get every month, which you do not need to pay back), and a second part is a loan, which needs to be payed back later. You can choose yourself whether you'd like to avail of the "loan" part, and for how much (up to an upper limit). The loan has pretty good terms; you have several decades to pay it off (if you wish to take that long), at low interest rates (it used to be ~2% a few years ago, and is currently 0.6%).
This is available for non-Swedish citizens studying in Sweden as well, I believe.
It's not particularly common, no. You might work a month or two during the summer breaks, perhaps.
As mentioned, tuition itself is free, but students still need to pay basic living costs. In order to allow students to focus on their studies, students receive financial aid towards these costs while studying. Pretty much everybody is covered for this aid. Part of it is "free" (i.e., a grant that you get every month, which you do not need to pay back), and a second part is a loan, which needs to be payed back later. You can choose yourself whether you'd like to avail of the "loan" part, and for how much (up to an upper limit). The loan has pretty good terms; you have several decades to pay it off (if you wish to take that long), at low interest rates (it used to be ~2% a few years ago, and is currently 0.6%).
This is available for non-Swedish citizens studying in Sweden as well, I believe.
There's a bit more information at http://www.csn.se/en/2.1034/2.1036/2.1037/2.1038/1.9267