France going down the rabbit hole of foreign student fees

When I was a student at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, in the mid to late 1970s, I was elected to the Students' Union council as what was quaintly known as the Overseas Students officer. It coincided with the then Labour government's decision to start applying 'discriminatory' fees to foreign students. I campaigned against the measure; I recall sitting down with the local Labour MP for whom it was apparently a surprise that the measure would cause hardship. Up to then  all students paid the same rate of fees. The fees would be modest, it was promised. But, of course, governments and universities to this day saw ever-increasing fees for foreigners as a golden egg.
I've been saying for years that over-reliance on foreign student fees income is imprudent.  A downturn in a foreign economy, an event like COVID, or political retaliation by states pulling their students out can impact the financial fortunes of those universities which, in the absence of adequate government funding, have only this one single economic lifeboat to climb aboard. However, what is more disturbing is the lack of political morality of it all. Instead of the the UK, the West, paying back to those parts of the world that they have exploited under capitalism and colonialism, they have taken even more from them.
During my time as professor at the University of Lyon (Jean Moulin) I was able to establish multiple degree programmes with China, and other countries, which far from being money-making schemes were aimed and providing critical humanities training to those students who could never have afforded to study in the USA or the UK. Some would see this as soft diplomacy, an attempt to win hearts and minds. Perhaps. But I saw it as an opportunity to help the most needy and meritorious students fulfil their potential.
The Macron government now in its final agony, has decided this the right time to make foreign (non-European Union) students to put an end to the equal fees regime (see Mathilde Goanec, Les étudiants étrangers sommés de payer plus pour renflouer l’université (Mediapart 25.04.2026). This would be a major mistake in political terms; the kudos that stems from not imposing punitive and exploitative fees on foreign students is enormous. But, again, in terms of historical and political reality at a time when France should be finding ways to compensate for its part in the story of slavery and colonialism, it is taking a contrary position. There is a time to stop the mean-spirited measure, and we should all speak up against it.