International students pay two to nearly six times the home fee — and the fee keeps rising while you save

The short answer: what a degree costs depends less on the country than on whether the student counts as home or international there. A Canadian undergraduate paid an average of C$8,021 in tuition for 2026/2027 and an international one C$42,062, about 5.2 times as much¹. At the National University of Singapore a citizen studying computing pays S$8,300 a year and an international student without the tuition grant S$39,700². Germany’s state universities generally charge no fees for a bachelor’s degree at all³. Living costs, which no government subsidises for anyone, are often the larger half of the bill.

Tuition for a home and an international student, country by country

The table sets the price a home student is charged beside the price for a student from abroad. Where a statistics office publishes a national average it is used; where none exists, a named university’s own fee schedule is shown as an example rather than a national figure.

• United States. The College Board’s average published tuition and fees for 2025-26 were $11,950 at a public four-year college for a state resident, $31,880 for a student from out of state and $45,000 at a private non-profit college⁵. Its private figure is 3.8 times the in-state one, and both are sticker prices that grants reduce for many American families⁵.
• United Kingdom. A home undergraduate in England pays up to £9,790 in 2026/27, up from £9,535 in 2025/26, and borrows it from the government if they choose⁴. International fees are set by each university: the University of Reading charges £25,850 for a classroom course and £30,650 for one with substantial laboratory work⁶.
• Canada. Statistics Canada’s survey of every public degree-granting institution put average undergraduate tuition at C$8,021 for Canadians and C$42,062 for international students in 2026/2027¹. A decade earlier the international figure was 3.6 times the domestic one; it passed five times in 2025/2026¹⁰.
• Germany. The DAAD, Germany’s academic exchange service, states that there are generally no fees for bachelor’s and most master’s courses at state institutions, with a semester contribution of €70 to €430; Baden-Württemberg charges non-EU students €1,500 a semester³.
• Singapore. NUS publishes five prices for the same course. For computing in AY2026/27 they run from S$8,300 for a citizen and S$11,600 for a permanent resident, through S$18,050 for a student from another ASEAN country and S$21,400 for any other international student with the Ministry of Education tuition grant, to S$39,700 without the grant².
• India. IIT Hyderabad charges ₹1,00,000 a semester to general and OBC undergraduates admitted in 2026, nothing to SC, ST and PH students, and ₹3,00,000 a semester to foreign nationals⁷. Private universities set their own fees course by course, so no fair national range can be given here.
• Japan and Hong Kong. The University of Tokyo raised undergraduate tuition to ¥642,960 for students admitted from 2025, from ¥535,800, and lists no separate international rate⁸. The University of Hong Kong charges a subsidised local student HK$49,500 a year from 2027/28, and a non-local student HK$250,000 to HK$280,000⁹.

Living costs: the half nobody subsidises

Tuition can be zero; rent and food cannot. The most reliable published guide to living costs is what each government makes an international student prove before it issues a visa. These are minimums designed to keep a student solvent, not estimates of a comfortable year, and every one of them excludes tuition.

Nine months at the London rate comes to £13,761 and nine months elsewhere to £10,539, before a single lecture is paid for¹¹. In the United States the College Board’s full budget — tuition, fees, housing and food — averaged $25,850 for an in-state public student, $45,780 out of state and $60,920 at a private non-profit college in 2025-26⁵. For a family abroad, living costs also arrive in the destination’s currency every month, which is where a currency move does its damage.

Why the international fee is so much higher

A home fee is a subsidised price. Governments fund universities partly through grants and set the home fee below the cost of teaching — in England by law, through a capped maximum⁴; in Singapore openly, through a Ministry of Education tuition grant that the fee schedule prices separately²; in Germany entirely, by charging no tuition at state institutions³. An international student is outside that bargain, so the fee carries the full cost of teaching and, in several systems, a margin that cross-subsidises research and home students.

• It is widening. In Canada international undergraduate tuition was 3.6 times the domestic figure a decade before 2025/2026 and more than five times by then¹⁰; in 2026/2027 it was 5.2 times¹.
• It is policy, not market rate. Hong Kong’s government created separate subsidised and non-subsidised fee categories from 2027/28¹⁵, and Baden-Württemberg is the one German state that charges non-EU students³. A rule can change between a child’s birth and their first term.
• Status follows residence and nationality, not where a family’s money is. A family living in Dubai with a child applying to a university in England, Canada or Singapore should expect the international fee unless the university’s own fee-status rules say otherwise. Each university publishes its test; checking it before the savings target is set can change the target several times over.

What education inflation does over 10 to 15 years

A family saving for a child who is six is saving for a fee that will be set in twelve years’ time. No multi-country series measures university fee inflation, so Nivritee’s defaults derive an education inflation rate per country: headline inflation plus a spread, widest where education is mostly private¹⁶. The defaults are 8.0% for India, 4.5% for the United States, Australia and Singapore, 4.0% for the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand, 3.5% for the euro area and 3.0% for Japan¹⁶. Read why one inflation rate is not enough for where each comes from.

At 8.0% a year a cost roughly doubles in nine years, and in twelve it reaches about 2.5 times today’s figure; at 4.0% it reaches about 1.6 times¹⁶. So a family in India saving for an IIT seat is aiming at about ₹5.04 lakh a year, not ₹2 lakh, and a family aiming at a UK classroom degree is aiming at about £41,387 a year, not £25,850⁷⁶. Those are the figures a savings target should be built on.

Two further effects stack on top for a family paying from abroad. The fee rises at the destination’s education inflation, and the family’s own currency may lose value against it at the same time; a fee priced in pounds and paid from rupees carries both. The second is not knowable in advance, which is why it is worth testing rather than ignoring — see home bias and currency risk.

Building the cost into a plan

1. Decide the student’s likely status — home or international — at each university you are considering, from the university’s own fee-status rules.
2. Take tuition and a living-cost figure for one year, in the destination’s currency, from the publisher’s own page for the current year.
3. Multiply by the length of the course, or enter each year of the course as its own goal, so a four-year degree is four costs in four years rather than one.
4. Let each cost rise at the destination’s education inflation, not your general rate.
5. Look at what the total does to the rest of your plan — the year you could stop working moves too, and the trade-off is set out in your child’s education or your independence.

What these figures cannot tell you

• Sticker price is not net price. Grants, scholarships and bursaries reduce what many home students pay, especially in the United States, and some universities offer merit awards to international students. The published fee is the right figure to plan against; the net figure is the right one to hope for.
• A single university is not a country. Where this report uses Reading, NUS, an IIT, the University of Tokyo or HKU, it is an example of a published schedule, not a national average.
• Rules move. The fee cap in England, the Canadian proof of funds and Hong Kong’s fee categories all changed within the last two years⁴¹²¹⁵. Re-check the source before relying on a figure.
• Paying for a degree is a decision with a return as well as a cost. What graduates go on to earn, and how that varies by subject, is the subject of whether a degree is worth it; how each country lends for it is in student debt systems compared.