What do student visas cost – and why?

Mr Deutschmann, your analysis focuses on the application costs for student visas. What prompted this study?

The analysis is part of a larger research project, the Global Mobilities Project. We are interested in how people around the world move across national borders and what obstacles and inequalities exist in this regard. An important hurdle for travelling abroad is often the visa application process. You need a passport and other documents, you often have to make your way to a consulate, and last but not least, a visa costs money. This is where we wanted to start with our project and systematically reveal what it costs to apply for a visa, depending on which country you come from and which country you want to go to. We collected this data for various visa categories, including tourist, business and student visas.

A key finding of your analysis is that there are huge differences in the cost of student visas depending on the students’ region of origin. How do you explain this?

The differences are indeed enormous: students from Africa or Asia sometimes pay more than twice as much for a student visa application as students from Europe. And the inequality is even greater when you take into account the different levels of prosperity. In Western Europe, the cost of a student visa is only a fraction of the average daily income. In Central Asia, on the other hand, you would have to work for almost three weeks, and in sub-Saharan Africa for more than five weeks, to be able to apply for a visa. For large sections of the population, this is not affordable. Our study of tourist visas shows that there is no single explanation for these global inequalities, but rather a combination of several mechanisms: Countries may want to send signals in international relations – by selectively abolishing visa fees as a sign of friendly relations, for example -, recoup the processing costs of visa applications or even generate profits, or sanction non-democratic states. Cultural proximity – like same language or the same religion – also plays a role, and discrimination against poorer countries and racism cannot be ruled out as reasons. I suspect that a similar combination of different explanatory mechanisms comes into play in the case of student visas. However, due to the somewhat smaller number of cases, this is more difficult to prove.

In your analysis, you take a very critical view of the current situation regarding visa costs. What changes do you think would be useful?

First of all, in rich countries like Germany, we are often unaware of how powerful our passports are. Since we hardly ever have to apply for a visa ourselves, it is difficult for us to imagine the hurdles that people in other parts of the world face. Well-designed websites such as passportindex.org can help to give a sense of these global inequalities. But of course, it is mainly a structural problem that can only be solved through institutional changes. Since the inequalities described are not only unfair to the students affected, but also prevent valuable talent from people in the Global South from developing, I believe that all sides would benefit if visa fees were structured differently. One option would be to charge lower fees to students from poorer countries – the exact opposite of the current system. Another solution would be to waive study visa fees altogether. Since students represent a relatively small group of international travellers, the financial losses for countries would likely be limited. And research shows that removing visa restrictions leads to better applications and that host countries even benefit financially from international students where they receive extensive government funding. A win-win situation, in other words.