Tuition fees take a toll on international student numbers

A recent report which indicates that as many as 43% of students who study in Norway stay on to work in the country is helping to fuel criticism of the government’s introduction in 2023 of tuition fees for international students outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) and Switzerland in a move that has already produced a dramatic decline in international student numbers.

The recent report by Statistics Norway (SSB) indicates that 43% of international students (4,936) who came to Norway to pursue a three-year bachelor or two-year masters degree between the academic years 2014-14 and 2017-18 – prior to the introduction of tuition fees for international students in 2023 – were still in the country at the end of last year.

The report, Higher Education Migrants to Norway, by Statistics Norway and published on 15 October, was commissioned by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.

In total 10,282 third-country international students (outside the EU and EEA) came to Norway over the last 10 years out of a total of 43,451 international students. The number was 747 in 2013-14, rising to 1,564 in 2022-23 with the lowest number being 535 in 2020-21. During that same period the number of degree students from EEA-Switzerland decreased from 200 to 50.

The purpose of the report was to identify higher education migrants to Norway between 2013-14 and 2022-23 who would have had to pay tuition fees if they had come in the autumn of 2023 or later.

The 10,282 international third-country students came from 75 different countries, and 64% came from the 10 largest sending countries: Nepal (978, 9.5%), China (938, 9.1%), Pakistan (819, 8.0%), Iran (804, 7.8%), Bangladesh (660, 6.4%), USA (617, 6.0%), India (597, 5.8%), Ghana (402, 3.9%), Nigeria (381, 3.7%), Russia (379, 3.7%) other countries (4.685, 36%).

The 2,085 students from EEA-Switzerland came from Germany (474, 22.7%), Italy (200, 9.6 %), France (172, 8.3%), Spain (165, 7.9%), Poland (147, 7.1%), the Netherlands (38 6.6%), Greece (125 6.0%), Romania (88 4.2%) Lithuania (84 4.0%), Austria (55 2.6 %) and other countries (437, 21.0%).

Men were in the majority among educational immigrants from third countries. However, the proportion of women increased over time, from 40% in 2013-14 to 46% in 2022-23. Seventy-six per cent of educational immigrants from third countries were between 20 and 29 years old.

Almost nine out of 10 degrees that the students started were masters degrees. Natural sciences, vocational, and technical subjects were the most popular fields of study among educational immigrants from third countries.

The report examined if the educational immigrants who started a degree programme in the academic years 2013-14 to 2017-18 completed their education and what they did after completing their education.

Degree completion rate

In total, 73% of the degrees started by educational immigrants from third countries were completed, 70% of which were completed on time, compared to 80% for educational immigrants from the EEA-Switzerland.

Forty-three per cent of non-EEA educational immigrants who came to Norway to pursue a degree during the academic years 2013-14 and 2017-18 were still registered in Norway at the end of 2023.

Jiaying Ye, one of the authors of the report, told University World News that educational immigrants from countries in Europe outside the EEA-Switzerland, as well as from South and Central America, remained in Norway more often compared to other educational immigrants from third countries.

“Before the implementation of tuition fees, students from outside the EU and EEA countries had the opportunity to pursue higher education in Norway at relatively low cost.

“A proportion of these graduates remained in Norway and contributed to the labour market, particularly in sectors in need of skilled workers, such as IT, education and healthcare,” Jiaying said.

She said that 63% of educational immigrants from third countries who did not complete their degree education emigrated from Norway. Conversely, a larger proportion of those who completed their education stayed in Norway.

“The field of study has little significance for whether educational immigrants from third countries emigrated or not, with one exception: students in health, welfare, and sports sciences – 46% of them were registered in Norway until 2023, a proportion that was significantly higher than among educational immigrants in other fields,” she noted.

She said that 65% of educational immigrants from third countries who completed a degree in Norway who were still residing in Norway the year after completing their education were employees, and 68% of these were in full-time positions.

“In the years after completion amongst educational immigrants from third countries with a degree attained in Norway half of the educational immigrants from third countries were employed in academic and higher education professions, but there was also a larger proportion, 17%, who worked as cleaners, helpers, etcetera.

“Eighty percent of those who were employees in Norway shortly after completing a degree remained in Norway until 2023. The corresponding proportion for those who were not employees or self-employed the year after completion was 34%,” she noted.

Impact of tuition fees from 2023

Referring to the Directorate for Higher Education and Skills (HK-dir) State of Higher Education Report 2024, the SSB report said that after the introduction of tuition fees “the number of new degree students from outside the EEA-Switzerland was almost halved which to a large degree must be explained by the introduction of the fees”.

According to the 2023 count 461 students paid tuition fees, which was a reduction of 71% compared to the 1,564 third country students, according to HK-dir figures.

Khrono, counting in October 2024, reported a further reduction between 2023 and 2024 [although not all tuition fee receiving institutions had responded].

As reported on Khrono 461 third-country students paid tuition fees. Two-thirds of these were from Asia.

Figures recently obtained by Khrono show that 18 out of 21 public higher education institutions have experienced a significant reduction in international student numbers from third countries – from 284 in 2023 to 163 in 2024, a reduction of 43%.

Nine universities or university colleges received more than 10 tuition fee paying students in the Autumn of 2024: University of Oslo (40), Norwegian Life Science University (20), University of South East Norway (19), Volda University College, and University of Agder both 13, University of Stavanger 12 and Norwegian University of Technology and Science (NTNU) and Norwegian Arctic University both (11).

This means that eight institutions hosted 78% of the international third country students reported to Khrono.

Seven of these nine institutions now have 109 tuition fee-paying students between them, while in 2022-23 they had 990 international students from third countries registered.

NTNU, the largest university in Norway, received 322 international students from third countries in 2022 but in 2023 had only 23 fee-paying students and in 2024 only 11.

Discrimination

Associate Professor Poul Wisborg from the International Environment and Development Studies, Noragric department of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences told University World News he believes it is geographically, culturally, racially, socially and economically discriminatory to take in fee paying international students as a way of funding higher education.

“I expect that the higher tuition fees that universities are now in the process of introducing will only accelerate those processes we are now seeing which are leading to us losing the diversity in the classroom, at the university, and in society,” Wisborg said.

“What we are seeing now is that the tuition fee has an even stronger exclusionary effect than what the government had anticipated. In our programmes, it is particularly noticeable that the number of African students is drastically reduced.

“Where Norway used to defend the principle of solidarity in its support for higher education internationally, now the reverse seems to be the case. The less financial resources a country and its population has, the more affected it will be by the tuition fees.

“It is also ironic that a government critical of the EU now privileges EU-EEA students and, in effect, only receives students from other continents if they have a prior connection to EU-EEA countries. Europe is now the main gateway for, for example, African students, to Norwegian higher education,” he noted.

Wisborg said that the situation removed “a legal, orderly form of migration”, and reduced the benefits to be gained from the many who return.

He said that while students from the wealthy countries affected, such as Australia and North America, have other options, the new disincentive for them to come to Norway in the form of fees also reduces the diversity and quality of education in Norway.

“The tuition fee means that for international degree students in Norway from outside Europe, there is now a strong selection of elite students or students who experience undue pressure, whether trying to survive based on their own work [to earn income] or by relying on families.

“I observed the stress of a first-year masters student, who during the exam period in spring, had to raise funding for the second year, and pleaded with the university for extra time – but the immigration authorities will not prolong residence for a student who has failed to pay on time,” Wisborg said.

A ‘profound loss’

Jennifer Infanti, an associate professor in the department of public health and nursing at NTNU, also expressed concern about the impact of tuition fees on non-EU and EEA students.

She described the drop at NTNU – from 322 students in 2022 to just 11 in 2024 – as “a profound loss for our academic community”.

She said the SSB report shows that 73% of these students completed their degrees, and 43% remained in Norway, contributing to sectors like health and IT areas where there are local workforce shortages.

“Tuition fees have drastically altered the landscape, reducing diversity, weakening international ties, and diminishing the talent pipeline essential for research and innovation – vital to Norway’s global standing,” she noted.

Bjarte Hoem, director of academic affairs at the University of Stavanger, told University World News the income from tuition fees for third country students was inadequate to make up for the budget cuts. "And we are getting a campus that is less diversified."

For the region of Stavanger, in particular, the situation has meant significantly reduced access to important talents, said Hoem, who referred to an an investigation by Rambøll Management Consulting in 2021 which showed that 75% of those students who came from outside of Europe and graduated from the University of Stavanger between 2015 and 2020 were still living in Norway.

Professor Bjørn Stensaker, vice-rector for education at the University of Oslo, told University World News the ambitions of the ministry with respect to internationalisation were largely unclear.

“Tuition fees were implemented as a result of the need to cut the budgets of higher education institutions, and as a possibility for universities to attract fresh resources.

“But international students represent more than just possibilities for increased income. International students add quality to the whole higher education system, and given the skills shortage we see in Norway in a number of areas, it is surprising that international students are not seen as a fantastic resource for adding competence also in the Norwegian labour market. This should also be of concern for the government,” Stensaker said.

“The University of Oslo does think it can offer something unique to international students, but it takes time to build up an infrastructure and an apparatus for handling international applicants.

“We see from Sweden and Denmark that it takes five to eight years to establish effective institutional routines, but our ambition is to substantially increase the number of fee paying students, which hopefully will also enable us to introduce our own stipend programmes for students unable to pay regular fees,” he said.

“If we are to compete with much more experienced players internationally, we need to start working together,” he added, suggesting that national authorities and higher education institutions come together on joint activities to profile Norway as an attractive country for foreign students, and acknowledge the contribution of international students.

The ‘paradox’ of charging fees

Professor Ole Petter Ottersen, former rector of the University of Oslo and president of Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm and now visiting professor at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Charité – Berlin University of Medicine), told University World News that the SSB report’s findings were “not surprising”.

“Sweden saw a sharp decline in the number of international students from third countries when tuition fees were introduced in 2011. Now – expectedly – we see the same effect in Norway.

“Norway and the Nordics as a whole are in many ways exceptional – we are outside of the major crossroads of Europe, with high living costs and with languages that are spoken by few,” he said.

“To compensate for this, we also need to sustain an ‘exceptional’ educational system in the sense that we – unlike most other countries – should abstain from charging tuition fees. We need to attract talents from all over the world and not only from like-minded countries in the Global North.

“Our ability to do so is essential for upholding the richness of perspectives and the diversity that are keys to quality and that are hallmarks of any thriving and forward-looking higher education institution,” he explained.

Ottersen said it was a “paradox” that Norway, one of the richest countries in the world, had set out to finance its universities by charging fees of students in the world’s poorest countries.

“When we now see the highly unfortunate outcome of introducing tuition fees it is time to reconsider the decision made and reintroduce the win-win of having the broadest possible representation of international students on our campus,” he concluded.

Comparisons with Sweden

André Bryntesson, a member of the Higher Education and Research as Objects of Study (HERO) centre based at the Swedish Centre for Studies of the Internationalisation of Higher Education at Uppsala University, said Norway’s “staying rate"”for third country students of above 40% was very high compared to Sweden where a Swedish Agency for Growth Policy Evaluations and Analyses report concluded that 20% of students tended to stay on after graduation.

“The estimate I did some years ago suggested that Sweden’s low staying rates (at the time incorrectly estimated by others to be as little as 10%) exceeded the levels at which the tax revenue generated from the remaining (working) students compensated for the cost of providing free tuition for the entire group of incoming students.

“The Swedish tuition fees reduced the number of incoming students, while the relative proportion of them that stayed for work remained the same, meaning that the absolute number of remaining students dropped at the same rate as the overall tuition fee-related drop.

“Overall, the assessment was that, concerning the financial side of things, what matters most is the absolute number of students who remain in the country to work, not whether or not tuition fees are introduced, since size of tuition fees is rather marginal in comparison to tax revenues.

“Another thing to factor in is whether or not the incoming students study in fields where there is a skill shortage. I don't know the Norwegian labour market well enough, but for Sweden, the drop of students in technical fields was problematic in relation to domestic skill shortages,” Bryntesson said.

Emmanuel Ovon Babatunde, senior research adviser at the University of Bergen in Norway and one-time beneficiary of the Norwegian free educational system, said the introduction of tuition fees marked a significant shift in Norway’s higher education policy, with wide-reaching implications.

“The sharp decline in international student enrolment is already visible, and the long-term consequences may include reduced diversity and less international talent in Norway.

“As higher education institutions and policymakers grapple with these changes, the country faces the challenge of maintaining its reputation as an inclusive, global education hub while ensuring financial viability.

“The full impact of this policy will unfold over the coming years, but one thing is clear: Norway's international education landscape will never be the same,” he noted.