(Quebec) Quebec will double the tuition fees imposed on students from other Canadian provinces who attend an English-speaking university.
For foreign students who choose to be trained in English, the bill will be steep. The decision ironically results in the postponement of a plan to promote French by 50 million in five years that McGill University wanted to present this week.
The shock is great in the three English-speaking universities of Quebec which fear losing students and income.
“It will potentially have a catastrophic budgetary impact for our university, a destructive impact. We are very worried,” says the principal and vice-chancellor of Bishop’s University, Sébastien Lebel-Grenier.
A little less than 30% of the approximately 3,000 students at this Sherbrooke establishment come from other Canadian provinces; approximately 15% of its clientele are foreign students.
The Minister of Higher Education, Pascale Déry, and her colleague Minister of the French Language, Jean-François Roberge, will announce this Friday in Montreal the terms of the increase in tuition fees. This decision, of which The Press reported Thursday, is part of an action plan on French from the Legault government.
According to information obtained from university sources, tuition fees will increase from $9,000 to approximately $18,000 for students from other Canadian provinces who choose to attend an English-speaking university (McGill, Concordia or Bishop’s). The government will recover the fruits of this increase.
“What the government wants to do in Quebec is to make it twice as expensive to study here (for a student from other provinces) as elsewhere in Canada,” estimates Sébastien Lebel-Grenier. According to him, the current tuition fees of $9,000 correspond to the Canadian average.
In its annual budgetary rules for universities, the government itself emphasizes that “since the fall term of 1997, Canadian students and permanent residents of Canada who are not residents of Quebec have paid tuition fees generally comparable to those in force in universities elsewhere in Canada.
For foreign students, the Legault government’s decision is more complex. It will re-regulate their tuition fees – fees had been deregulated under the Couillard government, allowing universities to charge the amount they want, a long-standing request from McGill University.
According to university sources, Quebec will set a floor for tuition fees and, above all, a significant share which must be remitted to the government. It is calculated that English-speaking universities will have to remit to the government a few thousand dollars per student.
The pot would be redistributed to French-speaking universities, which suggests the creation of a form of equalization.
Appointed by the Legault government in December, the president of the University of Quebec, former PQ MP Alexandre Cloutier, has been putting pressure on the government since the spring and denouncing underfunding of the establishments in his network. He estimates the shortfall at $100 million per year.
The mechanism adopted by the government “could ensure that the income held by universities [anglophones] will be reduced, that there will be a significant government drain,” confirms Sébastien Lebel-Grenier.
It is expected that the bill imposed on foreign students will be increased in English-speaking universities to compensate for the government drain.
Currently, fees amount to more than $27,000 for a foreign student, except for a French and a Belgian who pay the same as a Canadian outside Quebec ($9,000). Tuition fees for a Quebec student are $2,880 per year.
PHOTO JACQUES BOISSINOT, CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVES
The Minister of Higher Education, Pascale Déry
Sébastien Lebel-Grenier deplores that the government has so far only transmitted “parceled information” to universities on its decision. Pascale Déry told him that the government was also sensitive to the situation at Bishop’s.
In interview at The PressJean-François Roberge particularly focused on the 32,000 students from other provinces and abroad who attend the two English-speaking universities in downtown Montreal each year and who “very often express themselves in English on a daily basis.”
“If we want to change the linguistic profile of Montreal, to stop the decline in Montreal, we must take an interest in the question of rebalancing university networks,” he argued. Half of international students and those from other provinces attend an English-speaking university.
The Legault government’s announcement comes at the precise time when McGill University was to present a plan on the promotion of French.
According to our information, the university has been preparing this plan for several months aimed at Frenchifying its foreign students and offering more French courses for its staff. It planned an investment of 50 million over five years for this purpose.
The principal and vice-chancellor of McGill, Deep Saini, had sent an invitation for the announcement, on October 11, of these “University commitments in matters of French”. However, those invited received an email last Friday announcing that the announcement was postponed “due to circumstances beyond the control of [la] will” of the university.
According to our information, the government then informed the university that a decision affecting it was about to be made public.
“McGill University has been alerted to changes that could have an impact on its financial health in recent days,” she confirmed in an email sent to The Press.
“Faced with this observation, the management of the University has chosen, as a precautionary measure, to postpone the announcement of the investment and its commitments in terms of French scheduled for October 11, while waiting to better understand the impacts on its financial framework. […] We are awaiting more information to fully understand the financial implications of these changes to university funding. »
She says she hopes that the changes that will be announced by the government “will not harm the reputation of our programs and the quality of our research. “All of Quebec will be penalized.”