Overseas enrolment set to plummet under Norway’s fees plan

Norwegian rectors are alarmed by budget cuts that would more than halve international student inflows and strip away support for wider work with the outside world.

The Norwegian government’s proposed 2023 budget would introduce tuition fees for students coming to the country from outside the European Union or Switzerland.

“Most of these students, the ones from outside Europe, come from the Global South, and they just can’t pay those fees,” Sunniva Whittaker, rector of the University of Agder and chair of Universities Norway, the national rectors’ conference, told Times Higher Education.

“Norway is a high-cost country to start with, so just being able to fund the cost involved in being in the country is one thing. Tuition fees will make it very difficult,” she said, adding that the presence of international visitors “provides a much richer environment for a Norwegian student studying at home”.

The government expects fees to throttle inflows by about 70 per cent, based on the assumption that would-be students will be deterred in similar numbers as they were when Sweden introduced such fees in 2011.

The proposal, which has been floated and rejected previously by Norwegian politicians, provoked outrage from the Norwegian Student Organisation. Its head, Maika Dam, said the plan “violates a fundamental principle in Norwegian education policy, that all education should be free”.

The same budget proposal would slice NKr69 million (£5.8 million) off the Norwegian higher education agency’s budget for international cooperation, which funds institutional programmes and projects. The national budget covering institutional travel costs would also lose NKr118 million, while a top-up to the stipend paid to Norwegians who study abroad would be abolished, bringing it on a par with those who stay home.

“When you look at [the proposals] together, they’re all putting internationalisation a bit under attack,” said Professor Whittaker, who said fee-free higher education was “one of the hallmarks of the Norwegian education system that we’re extremely proud of”.

“Norway is a small country in a large world. Especially with the geopolitical situation, broadening the minds of our students and getting that perspective is extremely important,” she said.

The proposals foresee Norwegian universities levying fees on non-EU students from the autumn of 2023 and making up for the removal of public funding, but Professor Whittaker said institutions were unlikely to be ready to collect dues by then, meaning institutions would simply lose the funding.

Curt Rice, rector of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, said most universities would not bother with the administration of creating new units to collect fees, so would simply stop admitting international students from outside the EU. “I think most of us are going to say, ‘Forget it,’” he said.

He said the proposals were “a kind of turning inward” and that government arguments that reductions would make more space for Norwegian students were unfounded.

“Medicine and certain subjects are [oversubscribed] but higher education is available. There are universities in Norway with unfilled spots, so somebody could have that spot if they wanted it,” he said, referring to teacher training programmes.

Norway’s current minority coalition government, led by Jonas Støre, will need the support of other parties to get the budget through parliament, meaning the anti-internationalisation measures could still be softened.

ben.upton@timeshighereducation.com