Whether high quality education continues to attract foreign students to Finland will be tested by new fees.
The Ministry of Education said in a statement on 24 February that it would begin charging tuition fees from foreign students from outside the European Economic Area on a trial basis.
130 degree programmes across nine universities and ten polytechnics will take part in the non-EEA tuition fee trial. Fewer than half of the programmes will carry tuition fees this year, with most introducing fees later during the trial period. The trial will run until the end of 2014.
The universities and polytechnics are to decide themselves how much they will charge students from outside the EEA, which includes the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. For EEA students, tuition will continue to be free.
“We are hoping that tuition fees provide a boost for the internationalisation process of the Finnish universities,” says Counsellor for Education Birgitta Vuorinen. “The money obtained from tuition fees stays in the receiving universities and polytechnics, which will use it to develop their international education and the scholarship programs that are required for the universities to charge tuition fees.”
According to Vuorinen, the universities and polytechnics participating in the trial period are free to decide on many of the practical matters.
“They set up the practices, such as the size of tuition fees and how they will be collected. The committee set up by the Ministry of Education will monitor and assess the results and different practices.”
According to Vuorinen, similar development is taking place also in other Nordic countries, which have been a rare enclave with their completely free education. A government bill was issued in Sweden last week about introducing fees for non-EEA students in 2011. Denmark has charged tuition fees from non-EEA students since 2006.
Still free for EEA students
In 2008, there were about 12,500 foreign students in Finnish universities and polytechnics. About 3,500 studied in the degree programmes that can now charge tuition fees, of whom about half are non-EEA students. “These are the reference numbers which the effects of the newly introduced tuition fees will be compared with,” Vuorinen says.
The universities are free to decide on the size of their tuition fees. “In the US, fees can go up to 20,000 dollars per academic year. In Europe, fees vary somewhere between 1,000 and 4,000 euros. It is expectable that the Finnish tuition fees fall in the European range,” Vuorinen says. “But the competitive advantage will be more in the quality of education, not the price.”
