International students at top universities withhold fees

Hundreds of international students at three major London universities are refusing to pay their fees because they say learning mostly in their bedrooms has not justified prices of up to £29,000 a year (US$40,000), writes Anna Fazackerley for The Guardian.

More than 300 students at the Royal College of Art, two-thirds of them from abroad, launched a tuition fee strike in January, the Guardian has learned, potentially withholding around £3.4 million in fee payments, in an attempt to force the university to issue refunds for the past year. Meanwhile, at SOAS University of London, where overseas undergraduates pay £18,630 a year, about 100 students are withholding fees; a strike is also under way at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Syahadah Shahril, a masters student from Singapore at the University of the Arts London, and chair of a student activist group Pause or Pay, has helped to organise the fee strikes and plans to launch a pre-strike call targeting international students at her own institution.
Full report on The Guardian site