Already 9 French universities have refused to raise fees for foreigners
Nine of the 72 French universities will not increase tuition fees for students from outside the European Union. The universities of Rennes 2, Clermont-Ferrand, Aix-Marseille, Angers, Paris Nanterre, Toulouse 2, Lyon 2, Le Mans, and Caen have decided to use legally existing possibilities to maintain the previous "European" rates for non-EU students.
In a comment to RFI, Mathias Bernard, president of the University of Clermont-Ferrand, which was the first to refuse to raise fees for foreign students, notes that the government's decision to increase tuition is at least paradoxical – since the head of the French government, Édouard Philippe, announced it as part of a plan called "Welcome to France." The goal of this plan is to make France more attractive to foreign students.
First and foremost, this measure will hit students from African countries. According to Campus France, last year France welcomed 325,000 foreign students, 45% of whom came from Africa. As Mathias Bernard, president of the University of Clermont-Ferrand, points out, unlike the American and Australian universities that French authorities want to emulate, France attracts a very different type of student than the US or Australia. "Our French universities primarily welcome students from Francophone countries – African and Maghreb countries. And these students have very different financial circumstances than students from Asia, who come in large numbers to study in the US or Australia," emphasizes the president.
In December 2018, the Conference of University Presidents of France (CPU) asked the government to postpone the decision to increase tuition fees and to begin discussions on how best to implement such a reform. The French Minister of Higher Education, Frédérique Vidal, categorically refused to postpone the reform but appointed five people to conduct consultations on its discussion.
Mathias Bernard stresses that in the time remaining until September 2019, French universities simply will not have time to prepare for the implementation of the new measures, in particular to develop a new program for admitting foreign students who will pay ten times more for tuition than their classmates from EU countries.
Students from Russia and post-Soviet countries in France are significantly fewer than students from Francophone Africa, but they will also be hit by this measure of the French government. "I am alone here. Neither my mom nor my dad supports me since I arrived in France. My salary is now 600 euros per month, half of which I pay for my apartment. So, of course, I cannot afford to pay such fees," Ekaterina Zhdanova, a student of foreign languages at the University of Nanterre who actively participated in student protests against the tuition increase, told RFI.
In December, French university professors specializing in Russia and the post-Soviet space published an open letter in Libération expressing concern about the tuition increase. The authors of the letter recalled that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, French universities annually admit students from Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, and Central Asia. Special programs for admitting students from the post-Soviet space were created in France.