Yeah, a no-brainer - but only to us students it seems. That’s why you guys visit this blog, eh? But private universities all around the world (e.g. Australia, Britian, New Zealand) don’t seem to get it, and are trying harder than ever to “catch up” to American tuition fee standards (think US$30,000+ per annum, and that’s not the biggest figure you’ll see). Let’s also not forget that it’s far worse for us Asian students with relatively weak currencies (we’ve returned to the dreaded era of RM7:£1 already).

Admittedly, it’s not always their fault. The trend towards cost sharing or even full-scale privatisation, as well as the need for more investment to compete with US universities, has required university finance departments to start pulling their weight, and what can any educational institute do in the short and medium term to escape the dreaded red numbers but raise tuition fees?

And there really isn’t much reason for them to stop raising their fees. The demand for foreign education in developing countries and even industrialised ones (like Singapore) is rising and will continue to do so until local tertiary institutes reach the standards students can be happy with. And even if governments manage to get something like this done (yes, a big if here, especially regarding the M’sian Govt’s 2010 dream), there’ll never be enough space for everybody.

But is cost going to discourage ambitious students from going overseas? Not any time soon I think, especially given the increasing affluence of developing countries and the full committment of some countries (Read: Malaysia and Singapore) to their overseas scholarship programmes.