The function that welfare states have in shaping young people's lives at university is largely underplayed. For young people at university and in some cases for their families, the welfare state provides financial support and possible additional security benefits. From a financial point of view, European undergraduate students receive on average 22% of their monthly income from state sources, although the percentage tends to vary across countries. An additional form of state intervention that influences young people's semi-dependent state is student housing policy, although this is mostly at the institutional and local level, reflecting the lack of state policy awareness on the function of student support regarding housing.

As stressed in Part 1, welfare state interventions are relevant not only due to the amount of intervention provided, but also because of the assumptions they make about the role that private sources of welfare should play in supporting young people before they reach a status of independence. In other words, what the state decides to offer or not to offer to young people will indirectly influence the function that labour market and family sources have in supporting young people's lives in university, while they are still in a state of semi-dependence. Both labour market and family sources, as we have seen in Chapters 7 and 8, have a role in increasing inequality among young people's experiences in university.

Part 1 has devoted much space to stressing the different welfare state policies that are available to young people across the three countries, arguing that these influence not only young people's experiences, but also how unequal their experiences are across the countries. The system of public responsibility found in Sweden implies a higher contribution by the state. State support can be considered generous, and state sources support young people during their quest for independence. The system of social investment in England assumes that private sources contribute alongside state sources in sustaining young people's costs. Support can therefore be considered to be conditional depending on the young people's status and is highly means-tested. The system of minimal intervention found in Italy assumes that almost all financial support comes from private sources. The state can be described as absent, as it doesn't take any public responsibility for supporting young people in their transitions through university.