In higher education systems that are partly tax funded, a country might not be willing to subsidize the education of international students who might leave after graduation. This paper analyzes how student migration affects governmental decisions regarding the private funding share of higher education for 22 OECD countries for the period of 2000-2011. Based on fixed effects estimations, we find a significant positive correlation. This result is robust to changes in the specification, including estimations for country groups and for an expanded lag structure. The use of an instrumental variable approach supports a causal interpretation.