‘ Foreign students charged more to study in UK’

Foreign students are a large source of income for British universities as undergraduates and postgraduates from outside the European Union pay higher rates to study in the UK compared to home and European students.

The UK does not have any cap on the number of foreign students allowed to study in its universities. In 2011- 12, 302,680 students from outside the European Union got admission in the UK institutions and contributed £ 3.2 billion in higher education fees.

Overseas non- EU undergraduate fees range from £ 7,450 to £ 35,000, depending on the mix of classroom and laboratory work, with medicine at the upper end of the scale, according to the Complete University Guide’s Reddin Survey of Tuition Fees, which covers some 110 degreeawarding institutions across the UK.

The United Kingdom government allowed the universities in England and Wales to charge up to £ 9,000 a year for undergraduate courses for home students from 2012. However, Scottish universities only charge a stan- dard £ 1,820 fee for all Scottish students. The students from EU are charged the same rate, but those from the rest of the UK pay from £ 6,630 to £ 9,000. Universities in Northern Ireland charge up to £ 3,575 for tuition fees to students coming from Northern Ireland and non- UK EU countries.

The postgraduate courses range from £ 2,000 to £ 27,552 for home and EU students, and for overseas students outside the EU from £ 7,900 to £ 38,500 for clinical studies in the UK.

The largest differential can be seen in MBA degrees – the fees range from less than £ 5,000 to £ 41,000 for both home/ EU and international students.

The average fee for international undergraduates for the 2013- 14 academic year will be £ 11,289 for classroom- based subjects - for laboratory and/ or clinical- based subjects, the fee is even higher, according to the Times Higher Education.

“That is nearly onethird more than United Kingdom and European Union undergraduates pay. However, the gulf is greater at postgraduate level: here, the average fee charged to overseas students for classroom- based degrees is just under £ 11,600 a year, which is nearly double the cost facing UK and EU students.”

The National Union of Students has warned that overseas students should not be treated as “cash cows.”

“International students are an important part of the social, cultural and academic make- up of university life and should not be treated simply as cash cows,” Daniel Stevens, NUS international students’ officer, told the Times Higher Education.