Or resident in the EU or the UK.

Being away from home for education purposes does not count as change of normal residence status - if the student is being educated in the USA but the parents live in Switzerland then the student is "normally" resident in Switzerland.

For the OP, try the Citizens Advice Bureau in the UK if you continue to have issues with the Scottish university admin staff.

Not being funny but 15 mins isn't enough time to begin to appreciate this particular minefield. I would guess we have put 20 odd hours plus many emails and phone calls into it and found different universities interpret the regulations in different ways - one I contacted was not aware of any billateral agreements at all and suggested EU students also had to pay foreign student fees.

Thanks for all of your help!

She seems to fit category 7: She's Swiss, her father is a Swiss National, she went to high school in Switzerland, and the only reason that she is currently absent from Switzerland is because she is pursuing an undergraduate degree in the USA. The 3 year limit may be a problem because she has been in the States 4 years, the normal time that it takes to complete a degree there. When we read the entire document a few months ago, it seems as if there was some remote clause that exempted her from being eligible as a Cat 7. I can't find it now, so maybe I was looking at an older version of the rules.

A friend called with more information last night and said that they had to "tell" quite a few unis in the UK that Switzerland is part of the Bologne Convention. It seems as if the administrators at the unis automatically assume that Swiss students don't qualify for the local fees because Switzerland isn't part of the EU. She also said that the uni kept charging them the international rate, so they went through the same process every time that they had to pay the tuition.

My husband is going to call the UKCISA Advice Line and the Office for Higher Education in Switzerland.

Thanks again!

And just to correct something that I said earlier in the thread - it's seems as if Shorrick Mk2 is correct that Swiss universities don't currently charge international students higher fees. It's a proposal that they are considering. From an article in Swisster dated April 9:

The Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) is downplaying a newspaper report that says the post-secondary institution wants to jack up tuition fees by as much as eightfold for some foreign students, including Americans.

24heures reported Wednesday that EPFL is looking at a proposal to boost the fees – currently 1,200 francs a year for all students – to 10,000 francs for non-European foreigners and to 2,000 francs for others. It said the same fee structure was being proposed for EPFL’s sister university in Zurich, ETH. (Link to full story)

As it seems that the Universities don't know the ruling themselves, it wouldn't have made that much difference, but, for future reference, it might have been a good idea had this information been included in the first post.
I'm not nit-picking, but it happens again and again on the Forum that important bits of information are not given with the original question. All the details put briefly and as clearly as possible ensure that fewer folk waste their time looking up things which turn out to be irrelevant or even incorrect.

Hope that all goes well though and that you manage to 'push' hard enough to get the correct rates for your daughter.
PS. I love Edinburgh.

Thanks for the advice, Longbyt. You're right, I should have put all of the details in the first post.

Our daughter fell in love with Edinburgh when she did an exchange program there last fall and opted to do her masters there instead of at the ETH, which would have been so much easier...and cheaper.

It should be clarified that Unis and Fachhochschules are not exactly one and the same, although they (unfortunately) deliver the same degree.

Yes and no, there is no definition in the law, so we're into case law now! In general the courts have held that children not of a tender age can in fact establish residence in their own right - Lord Denning suggests that that can be as low as 16 years of age! Crazy stuff!!!

There is a second document I found which discusses this issue. Basically the OP's daughter needs to show that she lived in the US only for the purposes of education - so things like returning to Switzerland during the holiday period, only renting accommodation during the term periods and so on would indicate this.

Hopefully it will not get this far and if it does then it is time for the professionals to get involved.

Jim.

Not being funny either but it does only take 15 or lets say 20 mins (since I had to read the other document this evening) to establish what the rules are, if you have legal training and are used to reading such convoluted documents.

On the other hand getting an institution to accepted may take hours, weeks or months....

Jim

I was about to suggest that same, the details given in the document are:

UKCISA Students' Advice Line
Tel: 020 7107 9922
13.00-16.00 hours UK time Mon-Fri

Having read the documents I have no doubt that your daughter is entitled to pay "home fees", but I do expect that you will have to put up a good fight to make it happen.

I would be interested to hear what information you get from UKCISA.

Jim

You may also want to look at

http://www.saas.gov.uk/student_suppo...l_students.htm

since it does explicitly say (at the bottom) that "anyone who is the child of
a Swiss national" may be eligible for support in Scotland. Switzerland was also a signatory of the Bologna Accords, and I think it also participates in the Erasmus program, both of which are designed to foster mobility - and more importantly, link Swiss higher education directly into the EU.

Another suggestion: contact the Swiss Embassy in London. They've surely had to deal with this issue before...

J.

I'm doing a course in Baden at the moment, but I got a status update from my husband this morning.

One the Swiss side, he called the Secretary of Education and Research who also advised him to call the Swiss Embassy in London. The Swiss Attaché for Science, Technology, and Higher Education told my husband that there isn't a bilateral agreement between the UK and Switzerland specifically covering fees. The Bologna Convention was only intended to promote the mobility of students within Europe. Here's an interesting link for more information about home fees at UK universties for Swiss students on the website for the Swiss Embassy in London (Link).

The next step is to contact UKCISA next week to see if they feel that our daughter fulfills all of the requirements for Category 7 before calling the University of Edinburgh. They may say that she didn't meet the 3 year residency requirement, even though she was in the USA for the sole purpose of obtaining her undergraduate degree.

The following is from the Swiss Embassy's website. The last point, the one in bold, is one that many students may not know that they have to fulfill!:

Please note:

Prospective students are advised to refer to the UKCISA guidelines (see links) to identify the specific category under which they might be entitled to “Home Fee” status. Applicants hoping to fit into the relatively new Category 7 “Child of a Swiss National” need to meet the requirements stated in that category and explained in the “Definitions” section.

When applying to a UK university as a “Home Fee” student, it may be helpful to refer to a specific category of the guidelines (often Category 7) from the beginning and to provide documentation to show that the conditions have been met.

"Child" is not defined with any age limit so that it may also be possible to study for postgraduate degrees.

It is required to be resident in the UK for several weeks prior to the start of the course and it is likely that the applicant will be asked by the university to provide documentation to prove this.

Yes as I already said I think this will be the make or break issue and you need to be prepared, if you can show at least some of the following things to be the case, then you have a good chance:

- She returned to Switzerland or at least left the USA during college holidays
- She maintained a place of accommodation only during college periods
- She had summer jobs etc... in Europe during holiday periods etc...

Good luck with it,

Jim

I just wanted to let all of the contributors to this thread know that, thanks to your help, the University of Edinburgh reclassified our daughter as a Home/EU student yesterday. This means that she'll pay £4,850 instead of £14,750. Quite a large savings for a penniless graduate student!

In case any other members of the EF find themselves in a similar situation, here's what we've learned:

• The most important thing is to call the university and ask to complete the hard copy of the form that will determine your fee status. Our daughter originally filled out the really short, online form. That form didn't allow her to fully explain her situation.
• Have lots of patience if you're going to try to call UKCISA because the telephone line is always busy. After numerous unsuccessful calls over a period of days, we ended up going straight to the registry at the University of Edinburgh. They turned out to be really helpful and had lovely Scottish accents too!
• Be persistent! Our daughter was told on numerous occasions that she would have to pay the overseas fees. The department where she will do her graduate studies even contacted the registry on her behalf and was also told that she didn't qualify for the Local/EU fees. This goes back to point number one because the registry was always basing their decision on the information contained in the online form.

Thanks again! I really don't think that we would have persisted without your encouragement and supportive advice.

Good to hear it worked out, and thank you for the hints!