Tuition fees paid on time by international students are an integral component of universities’ ability to maintain quality education, so it is imperative that tuition fees are paid without fail, even when financial difficulty arises. Failure to do so could result in disciplinary actions and expulsion, with this article providing some advice for dealing with these situations in an efficient manner.
Sweden introduced tuition fees for international students in 2011 and political debate centered on whether education should be considered a social right and its provision needed to attract those with the best academic abilities (Ostros 2004). Furthermore, higher education institutions (HEIs) saw recruiting international students as key to both their finances and national export earnings (Ostros 2004).
The Social Democrat government initiated a committee inquiry to explore ways tuition fees might be implemented, which resulted in a policy mix combining tuition fees with scholarships aimed at meeting its desired objective of increasing international student numbers while keeping access open for Swedish and other top students who could not afford tuition fees.
Finnish institutions employed scholarship programs to mitigate costs associated with international students and reverse this decline, reflecting how internationalisation changes the dynamics of cost sharing between higher education institutions (HEIs). This case provides evidence of how logics of cost sharing may shift upon considering internationalization as an issue.