France recalibrates: a low-cost destination with a higher bar for entry

Twelve months ago, France looked like one of international education’s clearest growth stories: rising enrolments, an ambitious government target, and a value proposition built on quality institutions at a fraction of the cost of the traditional ‘Big 4’. France’s story continues to be one of growth; however, the value proposition underpinning it has undergone some subtle shifts

Still growing, but slower

France hosted 443,500 international students in 2024/25, a 3% increase on the previous year and a 17% increase over five years, according to Campus France.

International students now account for close to 15% of the country’s total student population. The government’s “Bienvenue en France” target of 500,000 international students by 2027 remains within reach, but the pace of growth has eased compared with the sharper increases of recent years – a trend Campus France attributes to intensifying competition from other host countries.

Source-country patterns are also shifting. Morocco continues to be the largest sending country despite a 3% decline in enrolments in 2024/25, while Algerian numbers have held broadly stable. Chinese enrolments decreased again in 202425 again after a brief post-pandemic rebound, but momentum from India continues to build. India is now France’s 11th-largest source country, up from 13th, with around 9,100 students – a 17% increase in a single year, reflective of an ambitious agreement between France and India which aims to see 30,000 Indian students studying in France by 2030.  Sub-Saharan Africa posted the sharpest regional growth at 7%.

Tuition fee waivers are ending

The more consequential development in the French market is a change to how France applies its long-standing “differentiated” tuition fees for non-EU students.

Since 2019, France has technically operated “differentiated” tuition fees for non-EU students at public universities – considerably higher than the nominal amounts that French and EU students pay – but most institutions have chosen to waive these fees for nearly all their non-EU intake.

However, Decree n°2026-385, published in May 2026, caps the proportion of non-EU students that each university may exempt from the higher fees at 30% for the 2026/27 academic year, falling to 25% in 2027/28 and 20% from 2028 onwards.

In practice, this means most new non-EU entrants from September 2026 will pay the full differentiated rate – around €2,895 a year for a bachelor’s degree and €3,941 for a master’s – rather than the nominal €178–€254 that many had been paying under blanket waivers. Students already enrolled, along with a narrower set of exempted categories (government scholarship holders, certain bilateral agreements, priority research fields), are protected under grandfathering provisions, but new entrants largely are not. The policy has drawn criticism from some in the sector as a threat to university autonomy and to France’s competitiveness on cost, as detailed by AFEDEV.

Put in context, France is still remarkably cheap

It’s worth being clear about what this change means for France’s competitiveness. Even at the new, fully applied rate, French public university tuition remains on par with most other European destinations, and a fraction of what international students pay in other major host markets:

(UK, US and Australian figures converted from local currency and rounded; ranges reflect typical undergraduate courses, excluding medicine and other high-cost programmes.)

By this measure, France’s new fee is still roughly a tenth of what the UK, US or Australia charge, and sits broadly in the same bracket as Italy – arguably one of the only other genuinely low-cost, high-quality study destinations in Europe. So, France has not lost its cost advantage against the Big 4 – rather, the shift represents the disappearance of a de facto discount that many students and agents had come to plan around, particularly from lower-income source markets. The impact is less about France becoming expensive in absolute terms and more about the scale and suddenness of the change: for many students, tuition may rise from roughly €200 to nearly €3,000 a year.

Housing support has also been cut

Layered on top of the fee changes, France’s 2026 budget law withdrew the APL housing benefit – a monthly rent subsidy administered by the CAF (the government agency that manages social welfare and financial aid in France) – from non-EU students who do not hold a means-tested scholarship, effective 1 July 2026. According to reporting by The Connexion, around 100,000 students are expected to lose the benefit, which student representatives have described as many international students’ “last line of defence” against France’s high cost of living. EU/EEA/Swiss nationals and scholarship holders remain eligible.

Increased visa financial requirements

From 1 August 2026, applicants for a French long-stay student visa must show proof of funds of at least €877.50 a month – an increase of 43% from the previous threshold of €615 – and must demonstrate they hold sufficient funds for the full duration of their stay, according to The PIE News. Funds can be evidenced through savings, a financial guarantor, a scholarship, or other supporting documents.

What this means for the sector

Taken together, the changes mark a recalibration rather than a reversal of France’s international education strategy. Tuition is becoming more transparent and less arbitrarily discounted but remains genuinely low-cost by global standards. Housing support is becoming more targeted and less universal, which will be felt most by students from lower-income backgrounds and non-scholarship cohorts. Rather than being a sign that France has become an expensive destination, the visa shift raises the practical bar for entry even where overall tuition costs remain low – a point that prospective students and their advisers will need to plan around.

These shifts are happening while the government continues to chase an ambitious enrolment target and court strategic markets like India. How those two forces interact will be worth watching over the next two to three admissions cycles.

For the accommodation sector specifically, the implications cut both ways. Continued enrolment growth, even at a slower pace, keeps pressure on a PBSA supply pipeline that already lags demand. However, a student population with less access to housing subsidies may prove more price-sensitive about rent, and demand composition could shift as students weigh the total cost of studying in France against competing destinations.

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