The Bologna process for standardisation of European higher education specified an undergraduate degree of at least three years called the "licence" or bachelor's degree, followed by a two-year diploma called the master's degree, then a doctorate, meant to be obtained in at least three years. Because of these indicated schedules, the reform is sometimes (erroneously) referred to as "3-5-8". The system applies to the European Higher Education Area. European Master's Market Through the Bologna initiatives and support of the European Union, Europe is unifying and standardising especially the structure of their masters' programmes, making them more and more accessible to foreign students. An often cited advantage of the European universities is an advantageous cost/quality ratio. In Europe, especially continental Europe, universities are heavily subsidized by their national governments. In Germany, Scandinavia or Eastern Europe for instance, most masters programmes have been traditionally totally free of charge. Recently, these governments are discussing and/or introducing tuition fees. E.g. Sweden started charging tuition for non-EU students in 2010 and Finland started charging non-EU/EEA students in 2017. Austria In Austria, one obtains a bachelor's degree after 3 years of study and a master's degree after 2 more years of study. This is true for both the "research-oriented university" sector as well as the "university of applied sciences" sector which was established in the 1990s. Medicine and dentistry pose an exception; these studies are not divided into bachelor's and master's degree, but take 6 years to complete and the degree obtained is called "Dr. med." (However this is not an equivalent to other doctoral degrees, as one writes a "diploma thesis" and not a "doctoral thesis" or "dissertation".) In addition to traditional master's degrees, Austrian universities also offer the Master of Advanced Studies which is a non-consecutive continuing education degree the degree. MAS programs tend to be interdisciplinary and tend to be focused toward meeting the needs of professionals rather than academics. Before the Bologna process, the traditional Austrian equivalent to the master's degree was the Diplomstudium, leading to the title Diplom-Ingenieur (female title: Diplom-Ingenieurin)(Abbreviation: "Dipl.-Ing." or "DI") in engineering or Magister (female: Magistra)(Abbreviation: "Mag.") in almost every discipline. The Diplomstudium took about 4–6 years of study. Belgium In Belgium, possessing a master's degree means that one has completed a higher education (usually university or college) programme of 4 or 5 years. Before the Bologna process most university degrees required 4 years of studies (leading