French Aid to Education Staying in France, says EFA Blog

According to the EFA World Education Blog: 

'Foreign aid is supposed to go to foreign countries. But there are many grey areas in terms of what can be counted as aid, and who can be classified as a recipient. Figures on total aid to education, for example, suggest France is a top performer: it was the largest bilateral donor to education in 2009 (the latest year for which data are available) with $1.9 billion disbursed. But only a quarter of this sum goes to developing countries. The rest essentially stays in France, or directly benefits French citizens.

 [...]

For several years in the Education for All Global Monitoring Report we have highlighted the fact that the majority of aid to post-secondary education from France, Germany and smaller donors such as Austria or Portugal goes to “imputed student costs,” or the cost of educating developing-country students in institutions in donor countries. As the figure below shows, in 2009 half of all French aid to education was channelled to French higher education institutions that way.'

Worth reading the short post in full to get the full story.