It’s not too late to change your mind was the subtitle of the Oslo Academy’s MFA degree show this year, Free Education for All. A direct call to Norwegian politicians to change their position and stop the planned introduction of tuition fees for international students. But now it is too late, and the principle of universal free access that had hitherto prevailed in the Norwegian public education system is a thing of the past. On 9 June, the new law was passed by a large majority in the parliament. Only some smaller parties – the Red Party, the Green Party, the Liberal Party, and the Christian Democratic Party – voted against. As of this autumn, the new Section 7-1 a of the Act Relating to Universities and University Colleges is in force: “State universities and university colleges must demand tuition fees from students who are citizens of countries outside the EEA or Switzerland. The fee must, at least, cover the institution’s costs for the relevant education programme.” [Kunstkritikk’s translation]
The decline in enrolment rates following this move were as substantial as they were predictable. Before the new semester started, the newspaper Khrono reported an almost 80 per cent reduction in the number of new students from countries outside the EEA who will now attend Norwegian universities and colleges. The introduction of the tuition fee drops a bomb on the Norwegian education system’s international profile, a change which no education programme in this country wanted. On the contrary, the consultation responses submitted to the government ahead of this change showed that all of the educational institutions that spoke out were highly critical of the proposal and very concerned about its potential consequences. It was announced that the government will introduce a scholarship scheme for students from poor countries in the budget for 2024, but this will involve only 200 scholarships, a number which falls far short of the more than one thousand non-EEA students who did not enrol this autumn.
Over the past six years, the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo has had an average of five students from countries outside the EEA per year. Now, the academy reports that of the seven such students who received the offer of admission, only one has accepted. However, they will not have to pay the fee, as they are covered by an exemption due to their ties to Norway, acting dean Mike Sperlinger told Kunstkritikk. Sperlinger believes that the introduction of tuition fees has already had drastic effects at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, and said that he cannot imagine the academy receiving any students from countries outside the EEA in the foreseeable future, apart from those who already have connections to a European country.
“First of all, the new state of affairs is profoundly unfair and lacking in solidarity given the current situation. But one of the issues that has perhaps not been sufficiently highlighted in the discussion concerns how damaging it is for the education of Norwegian students within the creative arts when they lose touch with the best young artists from other countries,” Sperlinger said. He pointed out that the most important overall development in the art world during the last twenty years has been growing internationalisation and the advent of a more global perspective on art history.
“When we offered free education, we were able to attract fantastic students from Mexico, Ghana, Korea, and so on. These students opened up completely new vistas for Norwegian students and prepared them for becoming artists in an international context. Now we have to devote a much greater share of our resources to helping our Norwegian students forge the kind of connections they need to navigate the professional art scene,” said Sperlinger.
The Art Academy in Bergen also won’t have any students paying tuition fees this year. Eleven students from countries outside the EEA were offered admission. Of these, only four students – all of whom are exempt from paying fees – accepted, among them three students from Uganda who are covered by grants from the Norwegian Partnership Programme for Global Academic Cooperation (NORPART). The Trondheim Academy of Fine Art told Kunstkritikk that two students required to pay tuition fees have accepted their offers of admission, but that as yet they have not turned up. The Academy of Arts in Tromsø has one new student from a country outside the EEA, but could not tell Kunstkritikk whether this student is liable to pay the fee or falls within the scope of any exemptions.
One of the government’s key arguments for the change in the law – which, incidentally, goes against the Labour Party and Centre Party’s own policy adopted in their government platform, which states that education must be free, including for international students – was that virtually “all” other European countries, apart from “some federal states in Germany,” require tuition fees from students from outside the EEA. However, the truth is rather more nuanced, and far from all European countries require students to fully fund their own education, which is the line Norway has taken.
For those students who must pay tuition fees, it now costs NOK 456,877 (EUR 39,900) per year to study at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in Oslo and up to NOK 489,475 (EUR 42,700) per year at the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art. The art education programmes in Bergen and Tromsø are somewhat more affordable, requiring an annual fee of, respectively, NOK 373,550 and NOK 373,500 (EUR 32,600). This means that among all the Nordic countries, Norway now has by far the most expensive art education programmes for international students.
In Denmark, the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen is the only art academy which is required by law to demand tuition fees for students from outside the EEA, but the out-of-pocket costs for such students fall far short of those at Norwegian academies. The price is DKK 60,000 per semester, which corresponds to approximately NOK 184,000 (EUR 16,050) per year. In Sweden, the prices are higher, but still lower than in Norway. At the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, the tuition fees for one academic year come to SEK 336,022, corresponding to approximately NOK 323,000 (EUR 28,200), while a master’s degree in art at HDK-Valand in Gothenburg costs SEK 568,000 in total – that is, approximately NOK 273,000 (EUR 23,800) per year. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, the price is EUR 5,000 per academic year, corresponding to approximately NOK 57,000, or just over 12 per cent of the cost in Oslo.
Director Lars Bent Petersen of the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen told Kunstkritikk that this autumn, the academy has two new students from countries outside the EEA (one in the BFA programme and the other in the MFA programme), but both are exempt from the tuition fee. Petersen said that the students are predominantly Nordic or have ties to one of the Nordic countries. A distinctive trait of the Danish set-up is that all academy students have the right to go on to the MFA degree programme at the academy where they have taken their BFA, meaning that only five places are available to students outside the academy’s own bachelor graduates each year.
“Foreign students from outside the EEA have been required to pay fees for a long time; I recollect the scheme being in place back in the first half of the 1990s and it may date further back still, so today no-one has known things to be different. Having said that, internationalisation in general is a topic of much discussion among our faculty members, administration and students,” Petersen said.
HDK-Valand in Gothenburg will receive two new MFA students from outside the EEA this year. Prefect Klara Björk describes the obligation to charge a fee as an obstacle to efforts to attract a diverse group of students, as scholarship opportunities are limited.
“The non-European students heighten the quality of those programmes and courses that admit applicants from abroad, and they are an important part of the institution’s efforts to create a study environment with a global outlook,” Björk said.
Anneli Hovberger, director of education and research at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, told Kunstkritikk that the institute annually receives two to three students from countries outside the EEA – which is also the number of scholarships it can offer. After the tuition fee was introduced in 2011, it has not had a single student who has paid the fee themselves.
“The reform hits art academies harder because the tuition fees are higher for artistic educations,” Hovberger said. She noted that the Royal Institute of Art and many other institutions within the sector voiced their criticism when the fee was introduced, and that they have since raised the issue a number of times.
In Norway, there are currently no scholarships or grants which cover tuition fees for students outside the EEA. The introduction of tuition fees is, then, an effective obstacle for talented students from abroad who would like to come to Norway. At the same time, it limits the educational institutions’ scope for deciding which students they wish to admit and what kind of study environments they want to establish. This will, in turn, adversely affect Norwegian art and the nation’s art scene.
According to State Secretary of the Ministry of Education and Research Oddmund Løkensgard Hoel (Centre Party), the introduction of tuition fees “is not about national protectionism nor about a desire to limit immigration to Norway.” At the same time, the government has on several occasions put forward the argument that the introduction of tuition fees would free up places for Norwegian students, which sounds quite protectionist. All in all, Norway is now one of the most heavily guarded towers in Fortress Europe, a place where not even the most highly qualified and artistically gifted non-Europeans are allowed – unless, that is, they can pay a million Norwegian kroner for a master’s degree.
