Global student mobility has skyrocketed in the past few years, with a larger number of students than ever before exploring their further education options abroad.
Despite an upsurge in demand and higher availability of programs, there are still plenty of things that prospective international students need to consider before they jet off to enroll on their dream program.
Whether it’s navigating the financial side of study, learning a new language, or finding solutions to academic problems, studying abroad is guaranteed to throw you a curveball somehow!
To help provide clarity on which of these concerns carry the most weight, educations.com created a higher education report, surveying thousands of prospective international students from around the world to find out about the current trends and compare it to the previous years.
Their findings revealed one universal issue in common: tuition fees.
While tuition fees are a vital revenue source for practically all institutions. They help ensure high standards of education, faculty staff, campus facilities, and the overall availability of student resources.
While each of these components are essential to how an institution functions, when fees are too steep, prospective international students may opt for more affordable institutions or regions, and in some cases deter from studying abroad at all.
Increase in concern over tuition fees by region
Tuition fees are at least 21% more of a concern to prospective students around the world than they were before.
Interestingly, the region with the highest level of concern is Northern Europe.
While this area typically has very high levels of household income, prospective students from the Nordic countries may be concerned by how much tuition fees abroad differ from their domestic institutions, which in many cases are government funded or entirely free.
Prospective students in North America show a moderate increase of 33% in concern around study costs and fundingwhich might be surprising given that North American students are accustomed to tuition fees in general.
If you share this concern and feel that your desired destination or university is out of reach, there are fortunately plenty of options out there to help you fund your studies!
The most popular being scholarships, fellowships and loans that can help to cover your fees either in part or full.
Article written by Kiril Tiavin, educations.com
