Refugees in Switzerland will be granted better access to higher education, under a new scheme announced by the government. The programme will be used to prepare possible graduates for university and is aimed at easing the country’s worker shortages.

Refugees given greater access to Swiss universities

In a statement, the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) and an association of Swiss universities announced a new fund designed to give refugees better access to higher education. The government is set to spend 1,5 million francs on the scheme, which will run from now until the end of 2028.

Refugees identified as having the potential for higher education will be given free access to schemes designed to get them ready for university. They include, for example, "intensive language courses or orientation information on the Swiss higher education landscape,” the SEM wrote. The universities will work with cantonal integration authorities to identify suitable candidates.

The courses themselves will be offered by the Universities of Basel, Lausanne, Lucerne, the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) and EPFL. Courses will also be offered by the teaching universities in Lucerne, Zug, St. Gallen, Zurich and FHNW, in a bid to get more refugees to become teachers in the school system.

Plan will help with integration and Swiss skills shortage, SEM argues

The scheme is designed to help better provide for the approximately 80.000 refugees with acknowledged asylum status in Switzerland, and the around 68.000 Ukrainian refugees living in the country with S- residence permits following the full-scale Russian invasion. After Ukrainians, Eritreans, Syrians and Turks are the largest refugee groups in the country as of 2023.

The SEM wrote that giving refugees access to higher education was central to their plan to better integrate the population into Switzerland as a whole and the economy. They added that highly qualified refugees also have the potential to fill skills shortages in the most in-demand jobs in Switzerland.

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