Foreign students are big business in northern Cyprus, a tiny, breakaway statelet only recognized by Turkey, but some warn that university recruiters are selling “dreams” in the internationally and economically isolated territory.
One Nigerian student, who asked to remain anonymous, said he expected to arrive in the country whose soccer teams compete in European tournaments.
Instead, when he saw the currency was the embattled Turkish lira, he realized this was “not the Cyprus I thought it was.”
Photo: AFP
The Mediterranean island is divided between the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus and a northern statelet established after Turkey launched a 1974 invasion in response to a Greek-sponsored coup.
The self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) is home to just several hundred thousand people, but hosts 21 universities officially recognized by the breakaway authorities and Turkey.
International students pay tuition in euros or US dollars, and sometimes also for accommodation — a windfall for the territory’s isolated economy.
The Republic of Cyprus, an EU member, is facing record numbers of new asylum seekers, most arriving from across the UN-patrolled buffer zone, and accuses Turkey of encouraging the influx.
Almost half of the north’s more than 108,000 “active” tertiary students were from outside the TRNC or Turkey in the 2021-2022 academic year, with about 17,400 from Nigeria alone in the spring semester, official figures showed.
TRNC Minister of National Education and Culture Nazim Cavusoglu estimated that the university sector and its indirect revenues fueled about 35 percent of the north’s GDP — “far ahead of tourism.”
Relatively low tuition fees — sometimes less than US$3,000 per year — are a major selling point, and are often presented as if marked down by “scholarships” of up to 75 percent.
However, a university official who asked to remain anonymous said that this was a “trick.”
“It is not like we are giving these scholarships” to international students, he said, adding that the marked-down price is the actual tuition cost.
Real international tuition waivers were few, he added.
Some students said they had been misled about study or work opportunities, or were not told they were coming to a divided island.
Cameroonian Rictus Franck Ngongang, 28, said he wanted “the magic” of easy entry, but was duped by a recruiter.
The business student’s “first shock” was finding “there were 10 of us in a two-room flat,” after he paid 300 euros (US$309) for a month’s accommodation. He was also not enrolled in the course he expected.
He has since started a support association — also involving agents — to try to help other students in difficulty.
Some recruiters “sell dreams,” he said.
At northern Nicosia’s small American University of Cyprus — which officials said has no stand-alone US university accreditation — foreign students were learning Turkish in a classroom with Ottoman-style windows as the Muslim call to prayer rang out over the divided city.
However, head of student affairs Hazan Serifli said half of the institution’s 200 international students were not attending.
Some “lose their [financial] sponsors ... or some other things happen,” public relations and marketing director Engin Sirvan said, adding that it was not the university’s role to police attendance.
A report by the north’s Center for Migration, Identity and Rights Studies said that impoverished foreign students risked falling “into the hands of criminal elements,” and that the situation “facilitates human trafficking and exploitation.”
Cavusoglu said legislation was being drafted requiring agents to be accredited with the TRNC Ministry of National Education and Culture, and to provide financial guarantees.
A representation of modern Turkey’s founder and first president Mustafa Kemal Ataturk hanging on the wall behind his desk, he also said that there were up to 15,000 “passive” students not attending classes.
Nigerian Ibrahim Isaac, who runs a small agency, had a blunt message for prospective students: “If you don’t have the money ... don’t come.”
Education expert Salih Sarpten said the north is “unprepared” to host so many universities.
The territory is turning into a place for young people who “want to take a shortcut to Europe,” he said.
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