Cutting ties

Last week, the University’s academic committee decided for the second time to postpone final decision on future prospects for self-financed Bachelor students (SFB). The SFB-students pay their studies out of their own pockets. They perform better than your average student and they do not receive a single penny from the Norwegian government. Until recently, this group of students has been provided with a free Norwegian course of one year’s duration in order to be able to follow lectures taught in Norwegian at the University of Oslo (UiO).

The Student Administration (STA) is set to eliminate this benefit. Furthermore, they wish to exclude non-Norwegian speakers from programmes taught in Norwegian.

Saving money is the driving force, like always. STA spends 1.5 person years on processing applications from SFB-students, in addition to the money spent on the Norwegian courses. These cuts may seem reasonable per se, especially when taking into consideration that there are only some 60 or 70 SFB-students.

The question remains, however, whether UiO will gain more than they will lose from excluding these students.

One of UiO’s objectives is, in fact, according to their own web pages, to be «Norway’s leading international university, where the academic environment is characterised by diversity and the exchange of knowledge.»

The «diverse» academic environment has basically comprised SFB-students up until now. This group of students has had time to get involved in voluntary student representation, and they have done so as well. SFB-students have helped to create a vibrant international student environment in which they have taken part for more than three years. You cannot expect this from an ERASMUS student just passing through.

What is more, SFB-students actively take the initiative to learn Norwegian. They have therefore served as a tie between English speaking exchange students and Norwegian students. This is what we call integration.

And that is needed. Because there is no denying that many international students are currently isolated. To prove it, take a walk around Kringsjå student village, which has become some kind of international «ghetto». UiO is not creating a diverse academic environment by excluding the students who contribute to the fact that many of the Kringsjå residents get acquainted with both Norwegian students and culture.

In stead of being cheapskates, UiO, and Norway for that matter, should be honoured that students from Jamaica are bothered with coming all the way to our Nordic quarry, out of their own pockets, in order to learn a language that will probably never be of any use later on. SFB-students are resourceful people who bring knowledge about Norwegian culture to the world. That is better marketing of Norway than ten tourist campaigns altogether.

Internationalisation does not come for free. Particularly not if the term is meant to cover more than numbers on a sheet of paper. Proper internationalisation includes integration, social activities and mutual understanding of cultures. You do not have to look further back than the recent burning of embassies in Syria to understand the importance of this. That is worth more than 1.5 person years.