The University of Toronto is drastically cutting tuition fees for international PhD students — a rare move administrators hope will open doors for more outstanding academics from around the world to come here to study.

The university’s current tuition fees of $21,560 for international PhD students soar three times higher than the domestic rate of $6,960 for most programs. Starting this September, international students will pay the domestic fee.

“We’re always looking for ways to attract the top research talent,” said Joshua Barker, dean of the School of Graduate Studies, in an interview Wednesday. “We’ve got efforts going on a number of fronts and this is one of our initiatives.”

The benefit doesn’t apply until the students’ fifth year of study. In the first four years, neither international nor domestic students pay tuition out of pocket — it’s already covered by funding packages provided by the university.

The problem is that many, like fourth-year PhD student Somayeh Faghanipour, must take five years to complete their PhD requirements.

“At the end of your PhD, there is this limbo where you’re not sure if you’re going to have funding or not,” Faghanipour said. She called the announcement a “relief” for students in her situation.

“For a normal person to pay that money is impossible,” she said of the current international PhD tuition.

Faghanipour, who is from Iran and is taking a collaborative bioethics PhD at the Bloomberg School of Nursing, sees the announcement as evidence that the university is following through on it’s commitment to “internationalize” — one of university president Meric Gertler’s goals.

“Academia doesn’t have any border,” she said. “If they want to attract global citizens, it is a good strategy to do that.”

Faghanipour noted that many of her international PhD peers were top students at the top schools in their home countries.

Many of them will go on to work and live in Canada. Barker said almost half of the group encompassing international students and permanent residents stay in Canada following the completion of their studies.

While the immediate effect of the announcement will be relief for fourth-year international students concerned about their future charges, Barker said, the “longer term impact” will be felt in the university’s capacity to recruit students for whom the $21,560 may have been too daunting.

The announcement comes at a time when universities across the province are using revenue from international students — which, unlike domestic fees for most programs, aren’t regulated by the government — to give their budgets a boost. The CBC reported in July that revenue from international students in Ontario more that doubled between 2011 and 2014.

Supporters of higher tuition rates for international students note that universities receive public funding, intended to help domestic students.

The practice of charging more for international students is widespread. McGill University’s international PhD tuition fees are $17,198.52 annually, compared to $4,141.09 for Canadians outside of Quebec. At the University of Western Ontario, the rates are $11,796 and $4,660.66, respectively.

But Barker sees no downside to providing the break to international PhD students. Due to the funding model, he said, the cost to the university “is not as great as one might assume.”

And, he said, all students benefit from a more international network of PhD students, who contribute to the research ecosystem as well as the learning environment for undergraduate students.

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“International students are part of who we are in Toronto,” Barker said. “We’re trying to build as strong a research community as possible.”

Some doctoral programs Barker likened to “professional” PhDs will be excluded from the lower rate, including a Doctor of Juridical Science, and a Doctor of Education.