French University Fees Rise 16x for Non-EU Students
May 8, 2026
Category: France International Students News
France has ordered almost all its universities to charge non-European Union (EU) students sharply higher tuition starting September 2026, ending a years-long practice of near-universal fee exemptions.
The move pushes French university tuition fees from as little as €178 a year to €2,895 for bachelor’s programmes and from €254 to €3,941 for master’s degrees, roughly 16 times the previous base rates.
Fees were not a new idea. A 2019 programme called “Bienvenue en France” had already set those same higher rates, but universities were never forced to apply them.
Most chose not to, on the grounds that education should be equally accessible regardless of where a student comes from. The result: only 10% of non-EU students currently pay the full fee.
That discretion is now gone.
A long time coming
The government expects strict enforcement to bring in around €250 million a year, money that French public universities badly need. Most operate in deficit, with wage, energy, and other costs outpacing state funding.
The policy also forms part of a broader plan branded “Choose France for Higher Education,” which targets international recruitment in sectors where France needs skilled workers:
- Health
- Artificial intelligence
- Quantum science
- Biotechnology
- Energy
- Space
- Communications.
France’s working-age population is projected to shrink over the coming decades, and the government sees incoming talent as a partial fix.
Officials also argued that the higher fees will make French degrees appear more prestigious, and note that affected students will still pay less than a third of their actual training cost, with the state picking up the rest.
Still cheaper than UK
Even at the new rates, France undercuts the major English-speaking destinations by a wide margin. In Canada, the UK, the United States, and Australia, international student tuition starts at a minimum of US$15,000 a year and regularly exceeds US$20,000.
Specialised STEM programmes and selective institutions charge considerably more.
Germany is a different story. Most German public universities charge non-EU students only €100 to €400 per semester in service fees.
In 2025/26, Germany attracted 420,000 foreign students, a 4% rise year-on-year, while France hosted 443,500 in 2024/25, up 3%. With Africans now making up a quarter of all international students in Germany, France’s dominance on the continent—where most of its non-EU students come from—is already under pressure.
Universities push back
France Universités, the association of French university rectors, has been direct in its opposition.
The group argued that the fees contradict the “humanistic values of hospitality and openness that universities extend to students from around the world,” will deter students from the poorest countries, and will not come close to fixing universities’ financial problems in any case.
Twenty unions representing professors, researchers, and students coordinated rallies across France in March, chanting “Universities in ruins, science in peril.” Further protests are planned for 1 May.
Student unions FAGE and UNEF have called the fees “dangerous, discriminatory, and incoherent” and “xenophobic,” with UNEF general secretary Manon Moret warning that ending exemptions means “condemning thousands of foreign students to dire poverty.”
Expulsions already happening
The University of Strasbourg did not wait for the mandate.
It had already exercised its right to charge differentiated fees, and in April it notified 47 students they would be disenrolled for missed payments. Most were in good academic standing.
University faculty launched a petition condemning what they described as the “financial harassment” of students selected on academic merit.
Pascal Maillard, a professor at Strasbourg and secretary of the higher education union SNESUP-FSU, put the numbers into perspective. He noted that 90% of non-EU students in France come from some of the world’s poorest countries.
The roughly €15,000 total annual cost of studying in France represents the purchasing-power equivalent of €45,000 to €50,000 for a student from Senegal, Togo, Chad, Morocco, or Algeria.
The timing drew additional criticism. The announcement landed in the middle of the application cycle for the 2026/27 academic year, leaving both applicants and institutions without clear guidance at the worst possible moment.
Exemptions have limits
No more than 10% of students will be exempt. Most exemptions go to scholarship holders and those in financial hardship. Sixty percent of grants will be reserved for students entering priority disciplines.
Conservatively, critics noted that students from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa are largely on scholarships already, meaning the new fees may land most heavily on wealthier non-EU students, such as Americans, who have the resources to absorb them.
A question of enforcement sits at the centre of the debate. The right-wing union UNI welcomed the move but would go further, calling for merit-based selection of international applicants alongside the fee increase.
It points to a failure rate of around 64% among non-EU students in their third year of a bachelor’s degree, peaking at 72% for students from Maghreb countries, compared to an 88% success rate for those selected through the ministry of foreign affairs using academic criteria.
Border tech adds more complexity
The fee changes land alongside two significant shifts in how non-EU nationals enter Europe.
The Entry/Exit System, which digitally registers non-EU travellers at Schengen borders and replaced passport stamping, became fully operational on 10 April 2026.
Students on formal study programmes are exempt from EES registration, but that protection depends on holding the correct enrolment documentation. A student expelled for non-payment, as seen in Strasbourg, could lose that status.
The European Travel Information and Authorisation System, expected to launch in the last quarter of 2026, adds a further layer for visa-exempt nationals. For €20, travellers from 59 visa-exempt countries will need pre-travel authorisation before entering any of the 30 participating European countries.
The majority of France’s non-EU students are African nationals who already require Schengen visas, so ETIAS does not change their situation, but it does add friction for students from wealthier visa-exempt countries entering an already more expensive system.
Germany faces the same ETIAS requirements, so that particular hurdle is equal across both countries. The fee gap, though, is not.
At roughly €3,000 a year versus a few hundred euros in German service fees, France’s competitive position is considerably weaker than it was six months ago.
A political gamble
Whether the fees survive in their current form depends partly on whether student and faculty activism can push the government to widen exemptions, allow payment plans, or soften the rollout for current students.
For now, the policy stands, and France is betting that the cost of a degree there will still be attractive enough to sustain demand, even as the numbers suggest some of its most loyal recruitment markets may start looking elsewhere.