Abstract
The #FeesMustFall movement focused on the financial struggles of historically disadvantaged black students in South Africa. However, if decolonisation is to go beyond national boundaries and to incorporate pan-African visions fees must fall, not only in South Africa, but also for international students. Yet, international students and their financial situations are often overlooked in discussions over fees as they are seen as foreigners, or as privileged and seeking to reproduce advantage through international study. Although international fees cross-subsidise national students, international students are seen as an export category rather than at the level of the individual, so that the actual costs of study to the students is often ignored. This paper addresses that gap by examining how international distance education students studying at the University of South Africa (UNISA) navigate fees. We draw upon students’ narratives to highlight the proactive and reactive agency they deploy to afford and manage fee payments. These quieter registers of everyday agency around fees demonstrate the entanglement of national and international fees in higher education. In particular, we suggest that focusing on international student fees raises important questions about whether lowering fees for higher education students, one part of the decolonisation agenda, should be contained within national borders.
Highlights
The whole #FeesMustFall was more a South African thing
University of South Africa (UNISA) is the primary provider of mass distance education for international students in Africa, and the project focuses on students who live in Zimbabwe, Namibia, Nigeria and South Africa
Through stories of how distance education students studying at UNISA struggle to pay fees the paper inserts much-needed student perspectives into the political economy of international study, far dominated by national and institutional perspectives that emphasise international study as export earnings or part of marketisation strategies of institutions
Summary
As an international student I guess it’s a feeling where you just think that maybe your voice won’t be heard enough. It seems or feels like it’s a South African fight and us international students don’t necessarily have much say... We would like the fees to fall, you know Yeah it doesn’t really feel like our voice will really make a difference because we’re international students (Tendai, woman from Zimbabwe). The rising fees impacted poor students, who are overwhelmingly black, and culminated in the student-led #FeesMustFall movement in October 2015. The movement originated in the #RhodesMustFall movement at the University of Cape Town, which focused on the demand to remove the statue of British colonialist, Cecil
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