SWEDEN: New charges present new challenges

The decision to introduce tuition fees for foreign students has met strong objections by Swedish student unions and a massive e-mail response to Local - Sweden's News in English. But for two of the universities enrolling most foreign students, the government's decision will mean an immediate income loss in the millions.

Lund University and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm are expecting immediate enrolment falls of several hundred foreign students. These are currently included in government grants.

The universities themselves are not happy, even though they knew the measure was coming. They say the time-frame is too short to work out effective measures to counterbalance the negative effects of the first major reduction in foreign student numbers.

At Lund, Pro-Rector Eva Åkesson said the introduction of fees in such a haste risked eroding the huge investments in internationalisation made by the university over many years.

Nevertheless, Åkesson said Lund had an established international position, in particular in the Erasmus Mundus programme. With the university's wide experiences and well-established networks, recruiting new groups of foreign students would continue unabated, Åkesson stated.

"Internationalisation and exchanges with the rest of the world were an extremely important part of the strategy and we will do our utmost to keep up this work," she said.

Lund receives more applicants from foreign students than any other Swedish higher education institution. This year, more than 32,000 students applied for the international masters programmes and Lund has 100 such courses with 60 taught in English.

When tuition fees are introduced, the KTH institute might lose between SEK100 and 150 million, Pro Rector Eva Malmström Jonsson said.

"We think that between 80-90% of today's 1,800 foreign students from outside EU will disappear. Those universities with many such foreign students will experience a heavy blow," Malmström Jonsson said.

COMMENT:
I agree with Eva Åkesson. The student unions in Sweden have for a long time warned of this development. Our internationalisation is truly at risk. Too bad for Sweden and all our students. A part of the academic freedom is lost.

Christian Stråhlman,
President,
Lund University Student Union Association