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German state ‘experiment’ with international tuition fees comes to an end

Baden-Württemberg, the only German state charging international student tuition fees is set to drop them following a significant fall in recruitment.

An independent panel advised the government of Baden-Württemberg to scrap fees for students from outside the European Economic Area (EEA), introduced in 2017 to top up the local education budget, charging international students €1,500 ($1,639) per semester.

In April, the state’s Green and Christian Democratic Union coalition government vocalized its intention to abolish the fees, citing a need for skilled workers. However, the reversal of these fees would create a €30 million ($32.7m) hole in the local education budget.

Professor Antonio Loprieno, the former rector of the University of Basel chaired the panel. Loprieno said evidence about the impact of the introduction of fees in Baden-Württemberg were ambiguous initially, and although there was an initial 19% drop in international recruitment in the semester after their introduction there was a partial return to growth thereafter.

Conclusive data came in the winter of 2021-22, when Baden-Württemberg shared details on the almost 10% decline in international students in to 2016-17 compared to double-digit growth in every other German state.

For Frank Ziegele, executive director of the Centre for Higher Education, a thinktank, believes this experiment with tuition fees never really made sense, as 80% of the income went straight to the state budget, leaving little incentive to improve services to cushion the arrival and studies of international students.

Referring to non-EEA fees, Professor Ziegele says: “I think it’s an end to these kinds of experiments.’”