The increase only concerns university-set tuition fees for Bachelor’s students, meaning it will only affect students from outside the European Economic Area, a zone that largely overlaps with but is not identical to the EU. Students who wish to get a second Bachelor’s degree after completing their first will also be charged the university-set tuition fee. The increase will only affect new students. Students from the Netherlands and other EU member states will continue to pay statutory tuition fees, which will rise by 1.9% in 2023, to an amount of €2,209 annually.
Tuition fees set to increase at all faculties
ESHCC is not the only EUR faculty that will raise its university-set tuition fees significantly. ESPhil, ESSB, ESHPM and ESL will also charge their students from non-EEA countries higher tuition fees in the 2023-2024 academic year: €9,900, i.e. a 39% increase. Fee rates will increase less drastically at ESE and RSM (12 and 3 per cent, respectively), whose tuition fees were quite high to start with. Non-EEA students wishing to get a degree from ESE or RSM will be charged €11,100 annually. Medical students have always been charged higher fees because of all the expensive equipment and materials required for their teaching, and they, too, will see a considerable fee increase: €28,400, up from €24,000, which constitutes an 18% increase.
The committee wrote in a letter to the faculties that it advised the tuition fee rise to enable increased ‘clustering’ of tuition fees, i.e. greater alignment with the tuition fees charged by the other faculties. The committee also looked at the fees charged by Erasmus University’s competitors. The tuition fee rise will ensure that our fees are more ‘in keeping with the market’.
‘Discrimination’
The student representatives serving on ESHCC’s Faculty Council oppose the proposal, said councillor Rachnaa van Hunen. “It’s true that our faculty is facing some budget challenges. We students acknowledge and understand that. But that’s no good reason to raise fees like this. We think it’s discriminatory that students from outside Europe should be charged so much more. I don’t think that the argument that this will make our fee rates more in keeping with the market outweighs the importance of affordable degree programmes.” The faculty is discussing the establishment of a fund that will award grants and so allow students from less wealthy families to get a degree, but according to Van Hunen, that will not suffice to get the students on the Faculty Council to issue a positive recommendation on the matter.
At ESSB, most members of the Faculty Council are in favour of the proposal. However, the Council, which only has the right of consultation in this matter, did request that the tuition fee rise be combined with the establishment of a fund that will award many grants. Ultimately, the proposals submitted by all the faculties must be approved by the University Council. A date for the University Council’s debate on the subject has not yet been established.
