Cancel fee hikes for overseas PhD students, government told

Plans to massively increase fees for doctoral students from outside the EU should be scrapped, a government-commissioned report has said.

The five authors of the report, which was published on 18 February, said they were unanimous in their opposition to the government’s plan to raise fees for doctoral students who are not EU nationals from €380 to €3,770 per year.

The planned doctoral fee hike is “incoherent” because PhD students rarely attend lectures or classes, the report said. Non-EU PhD candidates contribute just as much to the French research effort as their EU counterparts, the authors added.