French celebrities support foreign students in France
“The program called ‘Welcome to France’ is intended to ‘create decent conditions for welcoming young people from all over the world to the campuses of our universities. But if you look more closely, it is a wall of money that the government is building against foreign students,’ the letter says.
Its authors point out that France is the fourth country in the world in terms of the number of foreign students largely because it is a ‘world champion in another model, which we are all proud of, and according to which access to knowledge cannot be a service like all others.’
The letter was signed in particular by economist Thomas Piketty, actress Juliette Binoche, director Cédric Klapisch, writer Laurent Binet, former footballer Lilian Thuram, as well as many teachers, graduates and students of French universities and higher schools.
Earlier in December, French art schools opposed the increase in tuition fees for foreign students. Representatives of 44 educational institutions in France signed an open letter in the newspaper Le Monde. Later, researchers from the post-Soviet region published an open letter in the newspaper Libération.
As RFI recalls, according to an order published on November 19 by French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, from 2019 the cost of tuition for students from non-EU countries will increase more than tenfold. Thus, undergraduate students will have to pay 2,270 euros per year instead of 170 euros. And master's students will have to pay 3,770 euros per year instead of 243 euros.