Leadership and Global Justice pp 131-155 | Cite as
Justice and the Free Movement of Persons: Educational Mobility in the European Union and the United States
Abstract
The average cost of a university education in Britain is £7,355.1 The average student, however, only pays £3,255 in tuition fees, which means that more than half of students’ university education is subsidized by the general taxpayer. Five percent of these students—about sixty-five thousand —are residents in other EU member states who have come to the United Kingdom to study. In 2009, the total outlay from the British taxpayer to nonresident EU students was therefore about £650 million ($1.01 billion). If we also count the effective subsidies involved in tuition loans (arising from lower rates of interest and lower rates of recovery from EU students who move back to their home country), the figure rises to about £785 million ($1.22 billion).2 Nonresident international students from outside the European Union studying in the United Kingdom, on the other hand, pay nearly the full costs of their university education (barring some special cases).3 The difference between EU and non-EU students is the result of a landmark 1985 European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling, Gravier, which barred member states from charging higher rates of tuition to EU citizens. The court held that differential tuition fees, in addition to illegitimately discouraging the free movement of persons across EU borders, also discriminated on the basis of nationality and hence violated Article 7 of the Treaty of Rome.
Keywords
Member State Free Movement Welfare Benefit Collective Good Host StatePreview
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Notes
- 5.There are interesting differences that stem from which part of the Constitution one conceives of the right as originating, but they are not relevant here. See Mark Strasser, “Privileges of National Citizenship: On Saenz, Same-Sex Couples, and the Right to Travel,” Rutgers Law Review 52 (1999): 553–588Google Scholar
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- On EU social policy, see Gráinne de Búrca, ed., EU Law and the Welfare State: In Search of Solidarity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).Google Scholar