Question 15023 — higher education

Summary

Mr. Abdelkader Lahmar alerts the Minister of Higher Education, Research and Space to the end of exemptions from differentiated tuition fees for non-EU students. Although differentiated tuition fees for foreign students have been provided for by law since 2019, many universities were previously able to apply broad exemption fees. In a context of widespread student insecurity, these exemptions were more than welcome. With the draft government decree, the objective is to have 90% of non-EU students pay differentiated registration fees. Tomorrow, each of these students will have to pay 2,895 euros per year of bachelor's degree and 3,941 euros per year of master's degree. This represents a seventeen-fold increase in tuition fees! This xenophobic measure, announced on April 20, 2026, unanimity against it in the university community. France Université, which brings together the leaders of public higher education, believes that this pricing targeted at foreigners “offends the humanist values ​​of welcome and openness”. For its part, the Student Union denounces a “racist attack aimed at excluding students from university on the basis of their nationality”. Many youth organizations are also calling for mobilization throughout the month of May. Government policy in higher education and research has been reduced for several years to short-sighted accounting management, accompanied by austerity. But here, a milestone has been reached. It is national preference, a pillar of the racist program of the far right for decades, which will be implemented at the university. Already victims of the end of the PLA decided as part of the 2026 budget, foreign students must suffer a new racist attack. This stack of measures targeting non-EU students therefore trivializes the concepts and theses of the far-right in the conduct of the country's university policy. Knowledge is, however, a universal common good. In the Republic, it must be accessible to everyone. Another university policy is therefore necessary. It is possible and it is desirable. Of course, it is necessary to finance the public university so that it offers a quality public service to all. This can only be done through tax justice and the fight against tax evasion. It is therefore high time to tax the billionaires, the crisis profiteers and the multinationals who gorge themselves to give public services the means to their action. This applies to the public service of higher education as well as to all others. In any case, wanting to make up for university deficits through racist and xenophobic pricing cannot be an acceptable solution. He therefore asks him to withdraw the draft decree aimed at putting an end to exemptions from differentiated tuition fees for non-EU students and calls on him to propose avenues credible sources of funding for universities based on fiscal and social justice.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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