British Degree for Less? New UAE Scholarships Could Change the Cost of University

**Tim Elliott** (0:00)
It's the Morning Drive, higher education becoming more expensive, but there is one university in Dubai trying to ease the pressure. De Montfort University, Dubai has unveiled new financial support for what it calls is International Year Zero program, and it's expanding scholarship opportunities. That includes a new initiative for GCC students whose education has been disrupted by the regional conflict that we've seen. So we'll look at what this means for families, weighing up the cost of a British degree, with Simon Bradbury, who is the Provost and the Pro-Vice Chancellor International at De Montfort University here in Dubai. Good to have you in the studio.

**Simon Bradbury** (0:44)
Good to be here. Thanks very much for inviting me.

**Tim Elliott** (0:46)
You're very welcome. It's good to meet you. I'd like to, if we can, kind of balance the realities, the financial realities of education. It's a daunting thing, of course, with the initiatives that you have going on at the university, you're currently undertaking. We're hearing more and more from families about the mounting pressures of international education costs. It's standard, isn't it? As a leader in this space, how do you view the current mood amongst parents and students in the region? And is the proposition of a degree shifting at all?

**Simon Bradbury** (1:24)
I think firstly, it's been a challenging period for families and their students.
Obviously, there was an impact on their learning. But obviously, for some families, there was also an impact on family income. Parents may have lost their jobs. So what we're seeing at the moment is the demand is still there. The value of a degree is still there. The intention to go to university is still there. But there are some barriers to coming to university, and one of the major ones, obviously, is financial.

**Tim Elliott** (1:56)
Education costs are a major concern for families. I've still got one of my offspring in university, in higher education. So I feel the pain as well. So the decision to introduce this new kind of financial support, the International Year Zero Program, piques my interest. What was the internal conversation at the university that led to the decision? Was it a reaction to economic inflation? Was it maybe a more deliberate move to lower the barrier to entry?

**Simon Bradbury** (2:27)
I think it's probably helpful to understand the kind of macro context around higher education at the moment. And certainly we're seeing international mobility of students wanting to go overseas to study for UK, US, Australian degrees still is very much there. It's projected to grow.
But what we're seeing now is there's challenges to study in those destinations globally because of different visa changes, US, UK are good examples. So there's a desire to study locally, A, it's more affordable, and B, it's more straightforward. So what we realize quite readily is a lot of students maybe in the GCC wanted to go overseas or they wanted to potentially study locally. But actually at the moment, that's incredibly challenging and complicated. So what we wanted to do is to put something out there that recognized the challenges that students were having, but provide a level of affordability for them to come to our university in that context and get a UK degree, whilst keeping open their opportunities actually in the future. Because if you come to De Montfort University for that foundation degree, you could still go to UK for your second or third year.

**Tim Elliott** (3:30)
So it's all options open. We have this new phenomenon, don't we? Or relatively new phenomenon of the Dubai kids who have been here all their lives. And it would be quite natural to go to further education, higher education here rather than, oh, it's time to leave at 18
That's kind of a new thing.

**Simon Bradbury** (3:49)
Yeah, I think it's really interesting as you've seen Dubai mature as an education hub.
It's a rising actually study destination, not only for the Dubai kids, but for people wanting to come and study in Dubai from the, you know, India regional countries as well. And definitely the Dubai kid, as you sort of framed it, there is a kind of desire, I guess, potentially to go overseas, but also a recognition that they love it here. And so what we can provide, and other universities provide this, is, you know, come to us for one year, two year. You can still go and do your final year in the UK. In fact, for us, you can even go and study one block, one semester overseas and come back again at our UK campus.

**Tim Elliott** (4:27)
A little taster.

**Simon Bradbury** (4:28)
A little taster and you get the same degree. So I think, you know, there's a whole series of different opportunities, I think, for students that didn't exist, you know, maybe even five years ago.