A tweet from Chris Marshall, Head of Policy and Strategy, at Swansea University on 6 January suggested that the first shots may have been fired in the battle to lure EU students to Wales when their fee status changes to ‘international’ later in 2021. The sub-text and purported THE headline is that the “Move sets Wales apart from rest of UK post-Brexit”. It implies that the Welsh Government is legislating, or planning to legislate, to mandate differential fee treatment for EU students attending Welsh universities which would probably provide legal protection from the anti-discrimination principles of the Equality Act 2010.
Just a word of caution. The link to the timeshighereducation.com source lead me to a page that read You don’t have permission to access this page.and a search of the THE web-pages does not find the article. It seems possible that someone jumped the gun, that the website has not updated or that the story, for some reason, never appeared.
If the Welsh Government does legislate in a way that gives legal cover for EU students being charged the same fee rate as Home students it may be the starting gun in a race to level the playing field in the UK. Those with long memories in UK higher education will recall the period when the post-study work rules in Scotland were more benevolent and seen as a boon for international student recruitment north of the Border. There seems little doubt that legislators in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland would come under pressure to allow the same benefit if Wales makes a break.
It would probably be a relief for Swansea University who management of their current preferential treatment of EU students seem a bit convoluted. The main fees page states, “Your Tuition Fees will be chaged (sic) at the same rate as International students” but the Undergraduate Scholarships page tells us there will be an “automatic discount to tuition fees for EU students that join us in the academic year 2021/22 and will reduce the fees to the same level as UK tuition fees”. Perhaps this is just an attempt to spare the feelings of other international students who will be paying £5,550 a year more for a course in, say, Business Law, LLB (Hons).
Another version of the preferential pricing is seen at Bangor University which has a £5,000 EU student scholarship for EU undergraduate students in 2021/22 – with the spin that £2,500 is off fees and £2,500 is off university accommodation. The difference between the International fee for a BA in Business Studies and the Home fee is £6,000 so it nearly makes up the difference. Maybe there is a hope that having a ‘scholarship’ split between fee and accommodation is a way of defending a legal challenge on discriminatory pricing?
There may well be other variations on these themes but the trend for many universities reviewed in England and Wales appears to be to proclaim on the international fees page that EU students will be subject to international fees from 2021/22. The underlying blanket sweetener, discount, scholarship or bursary for students from 27 European countries is offered discretely, some might also say discreetly, on a separate page. It all seems less than transparent and might suggest that there are deliberate attempts to keep the preferential treatment of students from Europe under the radar.
Checking the Government Position
In a written statement from Kirsty Williams, the Minister of Education for the Welsh Government, on 10 August 2020 said that EU students ‘will not be eligible for support or, in the case of higher education courses, home fee status’ after 1 August 2021. A search of the Welsh Government pages shows a new statement on the fee situation (6 January, 2020) which says ‘the Welsh Government will provide support to EU, EEA and Swiss nationals who benefit from citizens’ rights under the various withdrawal agreements.’
The European Union statement on Citizens’ Rights under the Withdrawal Agreement says that ‘The Withdrawal Agreement protects those EU citizens lawfully residing in the United Kingdom, and UK nationals lawfully residing in one of the 27 EU Member States at the end of the transition period.’ This does not, however, include EU students who are resident in the EU.
The ‘citizens’ rights’ question relating to fees was also answered by Michele Donelan in October 2020 when she indicated that “current EU principles of equal treatment will continue to apply for those covered by the citizens’ rights provisions in the Withdrawal Agreement”. It is difficult to see that the Welsh statement makes allowances for a significantly wider group than has already been accounted for in England. The devil, as always, is in the detail and the intentions of Governments are not always clear so I would be very happy to have authoritative guidance on the issue and whether the statement from the Welsh Government makes a material difference.
Legal, Moral or Ethical?
A material change in legislation would, of course, save the blushes of English universities currently planning to discriminate in favour of EU students against other international students. But it would not save the moral dilemma of advantaging students from Europe over those from Asia, Africa and the Americas. Neither would it satisfactorily respond to international students who have long held the view that they are exploited by universities to subsidize home students.
What the THE did write about on 6 January was that UK universities were ‘‘weighing options’ on EU Student Fee Discounts”. In the article Smita Jamdar, head of education at Shakespeare Martineau, suggests that “in my mind there’s a question over whether ‘EU national’ really is a nationality-based discrimination”. There is also a suggestion that transitional arrangements could be considered a proportionate response to the changing situation for EU students.
It’s all interesting stuff that will play out over the coming year but thus far the vast majority of universities have decided to charge EU students international fees for 2021/22. When a university chooses to significantly increase the price of a course from year to year there are not usually ‘transitional arrangements’ for new students. It is also difficult to argue that EU students have not had fair warning of their likely change of status given the Government’s General Election promise to complete Brexit.
It really is about time that the organizations with an interest in students – Office for Students, National Union of Students, UKCISA and others – got to grips with the situation. Clarity would be a very good thing but so would some considered responses on how differential pricing is equitable even as a transition measure. At the very least, universities might be challenged to indicate the timetable for any transition rather than allowing a systemic, divisive and discriminatory system by default.
Image by David Peterson from Pixabay