Alia, an aspiring graduate student in her mid-twenties, was searching for master’s degrees online in 2018 when the Berlin School of Business and Innovation (BSBI) caught her eye. Its website was slicker than those of other German universities and the course fees, at €11,000, seemed relatively cheap.
Originally from India, Alia had already studied as an undergraduate in the US but was eager to experience Germany’s business culture. After her application had been accepted, an adviser asked her to pay a deposit to secure her place. Upon arriving in Berlin that October, Alia was surprised to find that there were fewer fellow students than she had expected. The campus on Potsdamer Straße was made up of several rooms on a single floor of an office building.
The students, meanwhile, did not reflect those on the website, where she had seen “a white person, an African person, an Asian person, everyone just laughing together”. Most were, like her, from India.