Give international students the right support

Recently, the negative effects of the introduction of fees for overseas students have been highlighted in the media. The field of education most affected is undoubtedly IT.

For the IT industry, this is a very big loss. It is not just about losing a number of highly talented and motivated individuals in times of extreme skills shortages. It is also about both the industry and higher technical education losing the opportunity to maintain and develop international contacts, which are essential for both industry and academia to stand out internationally.

Note that even if students in many cases have not done what CS called for in its editorial on September 18, i.e. stayed and worked in Sweden, they contribute through their contacts with Sweden to the promotion of Swedish business in their home countries.

Two weeks ago, a delegation from IT&Telecom companies visited the Ministry of Education to express their concerns on the issue, calling for two measures in particular: ensure reasonable financial conditions for the third country students and extend the residence permit for the students to at least one year after completion of their studies.

Please note: like many other stakeholders, we do not want to reintroduce free tuition. We just want to ensure that the financial conditions are at least on par with those of our "academic competitor countries". We were met with sympathy by the Ministry of Education, but they claimed that the funding issue is a budgetary one and that visa requirements are a matter for the Ministry of Justice.

Later, the ministry announced that the scholarship funds for students from developing countries would be increased by SEK 50 million.

This is positive, but has a limited effect on Swedish internationalization because the funds are distributed from an aid perspective. The overall level is also still too low.

The issues of funding and visa requirements are too important to fall between three chairs in the government. We therefore call on ministers Borg, Billström and Björklund to tackle the issues together and solve them now!

Anne-Marie Fransson
Association Director, IT&Telecom Companies