Foreign brains wooed with lower university fees

Study fees for foreign PhD students will be slashed and their children will be able to attend school for free in new measures aimed at the rich education market.

Restrictions on other foreign students working part-time will also be relaxed in moves expected to increase the part-time work pool by up to 30,000.

The measures are designed to counter the fall in foreign student numbers in the past year, which has been blamed on increased competition from other countries and a more selective immigration policy.

After four years of growth, student approval numbers slipped by about 22,000, to 57,731 , in the past 12 months.

The aim of the new measures is not only to attract top-level students but also to make it attractive for them to stay in New Zealand after they have completed their studies.

But much to the annoyance of the Government, the announcement coincided with the release of an international survey on affordability of higher education which rated New Zealand 15th out of of 16 countries surveyed.

Education Minister Trevor Mallard announced the new measures yesterday while leading an education delegation to India. They are part of the Budget.

Just 251 students from India studied in New Zealand in 2000, but this year there are 2567.

Mr Mallard said he wanted the benefits to be two-way, as some of the world's leading research institutions were in India.

"I want our students to and staff to be more aware of this and to consider India as a place come for study and research."

An extra $21 million will be budgeted over the next four years, and will take the Government's budget in international education to $70 million for the five years from June 2004.

PhD students will have their fees cut to the same level as domestic students. To qualify for the reduced fees they will have to be supervised by leading researchers at New Zealand universities from the beginning of 2006.

The average university fee for foreign students last year was $14,363 but charges for PhD courses were higher.

Auckland University PhD fees for foreign students are almost $20,000 a year. The domestic rate is $3000 a year.

Abolishing school fees for students' school-aged children would also have a significant effect, as the average school fee for foreign pupils last year was $9721.

In defending the costs of New Zealand education, acting Education Minister David Benson-Pope declared the affordability survey by the Washington-based Educational Policy Institute "seriously flawed" and said it used out-of-date data.

It overstated the level of fees and the data was based on figures from 2000 and 2001, he said. "It ignores the effect of major changes in student support policy and assistance introduced since then."

Between 2000 and 2004, students had been spared $250.9 million in interest charges that were written off as a result of policy introduced in 2000.

Contrary to the report's claims, New Zealand university fees were now more than a third lower than the fees charged to students at universities in Australia.

Education pays

Tuition income from foreign fee-paying students 2004

* Primary schools $29.4 million

* Secondary schools $125 million

* Polytechnics$94.7 million

* Colleges of Education - $4.5 million

* Universities $339.4 million