Education

Foreign tuition fees, living costs on the rise in 2010

By Wang Chao (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-12 09:57

Chinese students will pay more for overseas educations in 2010 after popular destination countries decided to raise tuition fees to cushion the impact of the global financial crisis.

China is the biggest exporter of students, accounting for 15.2 percent of the world's population of international students, Mirror Evening News reported.

More than 200,000 Chinese students will study overseas this year, according to the Ministry of Education.

The US, UK and Australia have been the top three destinations for several years.

In Britain, grants for poorer students will be frozen while fees will increase by 2.04 percent to 3,290 pounds a year, according to the Guardian.

In the US, the California Board of Regents voted to raise undergraduate tuition by 32 percent during the next two years to address rising costs and offset deep cuts in state funding.

In Australia, since Jan 1, the living cost deposit required for international students increased from the original A$12,000 a year to A$18,000.

Australia's tuition fees have seen a 3-5 percent annual increase during recent years and are set to continue to climb in 2010.

Jin Lan, who received her master's degree in accounting from Macquarie University, said the tuition fee for Applied Finance is now A$3,400 a year - up from A$2,267 last year.

"Since the Australian dollar appreciated, the actual increase is higher," Jin said. "In some schools in Melbourne, tuition fees may increase by 20 percent."

However, many students who want to study abroad seem unfazed by the rises.

"The tuition increase in our school is OK, $50 more per credit hour, but I think it is too much at the University of California," Chen Xin, a second-year student at the University of South California told METRO. "Students from UCLA protested after the regents approved the proposal."

Xu Yingying, who received her bachelor's and master's degrees in the UK, also thinks the increases will not affect many students' decisions.

Xu now teaches in the associate degree program in Renmin University of China, and does regular consultation for students wanting to study overseas.

"The pound has devaluated a lot since last year," Xu said. "So, the money Chinese students pay will not increase that much."

Xu said many students will not care about a 2 percent tuition increase. "Once their parents decide to send them abroad, they would not consider such 'trivial money'," Xu said. "Compared with the 20,000 pounds they are already prepared to spend every year, another 400 pounds is no big deal."

Meanwhile, China is regarded as the largest economic contributor to the foreign education industry. Australia ranks top in terms of GDP growth, with 94 billion yuan (AU$15 billion) in revenue contributed by Chinese students in 2008, according to Mirror Evening News.

Australia has the largest number of Chinese students, at 130,000. The expenditure of Chinese students in Australia reached up to 29.9 billion yuan (about $4.3 billion) in 2009, some 0.4 percent of its annual GDP.

In the UK, according to the report from the Guardian, each Chinese student could contribute more than 217,000 yuan (20,000 pounds) to their university's income, while each British student only contributes 76,000 yuan (7,000 pounds).

The major "destination countries" have released a series of favorable policies in recent years to attract more Chinese students. Initiatives include a lowering of the bar in terms of visas and language requirements in the US, UK and Australia. South Korea also provides scholarship schemes to stimulate demand from Chinese students.