As recently as December 2012, the ETH Board had expected to be able to increase fees from the 2015/2016 autumn semester. This decision has now been postponed. The Board has shelved plans indefinitely due to a parliamentary initiative signed by members of different political parties, which calls for tuition fees at ETH and EPFL to be differentiated according to the tax domicile of the parents and/or the student. For students subject to tax in Switzerland, the initiative aims to restrict the fee increase to the level of inflation. For students who pay taxes abroad, fees should be no more than a maximum of three times those of domestic students.

The ETH Board discussed this political foray as an extraordinary item on the agenda and came to the conclusion that in view of the new situation, it would suspend its plan to double tuition fees. According to its press release, the ETH Board will closely monitor further developments of the parliamentary initiative.

The ETH Board had decided in December 2012 to phase in the doubling of tuition fees at the earliest from the 2015/16 autumn semester. The envisaged increase in fees was intended to fund teaching. The ETH Board had instructed the two ETH Presidents to discuss further potential uses for the additional resources with the student associations and the university assemblies, and discussions at ETH Zurich were already underway. In an interview in late February with ‘ETH Life’, Petros Papadopoulos, the president of the Federation of Students at ETH Zurich (VSETH), stated: “We haven’t heard the last word on tuition fees yet.”

An ETH Board policy decision published in December to set the course for the doubling of tuition fees prompted two parliamentary motions and five interpellations. Various parties, including the CVP, SP and SVP, questioned the social impact of the decision in particular. In its responses, the Federal Council underlined the great importance of equal opportunities in education, but also stressed the right of the ETH Board to determine tuition fees. ETH law defines, however, certain conditions including the policy that fees must be socially acceptable