International undergraduate students now pay less tuition to attend the university beginning in the 2015 fall semester.

International students pay $356 per-semester hour instead of the original $849, according to the proposed FY16 fee recommendations.

Kevin Vicker, the director of office of international students and scholars, said the decision to lower international student tuition is to generate more revenue and it is a “win-win” for the school.

Vicker said there are 48 new undergraduate international students this year, which is more than last year.

“It’s great for the university to host many international students because it diversifies our campus and brings a lot more people together,” Vicker said.

Paul McCann, the interim vice president for business affairs, said the average international tuition rate at one point was three times that of an in state tuition.

“One of our issues was we had few foreign students and at that point a number of the foreign students were paying three times the in-state rate,” McCann said. “It was stopping a lot of the foreign students from coming to campus.

McCann conducted a study, which he presented to the Board of Trustees to show what the best course of action should be.

“We looked at how many foreign students were being affected by that higher rate,” McCann said. “Through this we saw a significant market out there that we couldn’t tap because the rate was too high for those students,” McCann said.

McCann said they found that the school could get more international student enrollment out of lowering the tuition, which therefore could generate more revenue for the school.

“We found that it would be more beneficial to decrease the rate so that we would have more students coming in,” McCann said.

Prabeg Ghimire, a graduate student of technology, said he thinks making the tuition cost lower will attract more international students.

Ghimire said it is hard for some international students economically and the new cost will help them.

“Not all students come from rich families thus in order to attract students from average economical families from Asian countries or any other countries I think this was a good move taken by Eastern,” Ghimire said.

Meung-a Lee, a junior pre-nursing major, said when her scholarship from Eastern ended and she decided to stay she was worried that the tuition would be a problem.

“Almost all of my Korean friends who came here with me last semester went back to Korea,” Lee said. “Even though they could extend one more semester, because the tuition is expensive for them.”

Lee said she received a scholarship from her university in South Korea and Eastern and she decided to stay after initially coming to Eastern for just a semester.

Lee said when the tuition went down it made her think of staying at Eastern longer than planned.

Yanzhang Yang, a sophomore engineering major, said the new tuition rate surprised him when he heard about it.

Yang said he think this is a very helpful action especially for those students who do not have very rich family and backgrounds.

“I am not from a really rich family so that is not easy for my family to support my tuition fee,” Yang said. “That change let me even to want to introduce our school to my friends in our country so that they can come to our school with a low tuition fee.”

Alex Seidler can be reached at 581-2812 or ajseidler@eiu.edu