The complaints of our English-speaking institutions are as boring and predictable as the return of bad music at Christmas.
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The Legault government wanted to increase tuition fees from $9,000 to $17,000 for students from the rest of Canada who enroll in our English-speaking universities.
It will end up being $12,000.
Facts
McGill and Concordia are still complaining.
The Legault government is also maintaining the introduction of a floor price of $20,000 for international students, the rest varying depending on the discipline.
The sums thus generated, approximately 125 million per year, would be redistributed to French-speaking universities.
According to McGill, this policy would be based on “impressions”. Really?
In Quebec, there are approximately 75% of citizens with French as their mother tongue, 8% with English as their mother tongue, and 17% with other mother tongues.
The numbers vary depending on whether you look at native language, language spoken most often at home, etc. But that gives you an idea.
English-speaking universities host 25% of all university students and receive an even larger proportion of funding.
For what? There are three categories of students: residents of Quebec, who pay the basic fees, those from the rest of Canada, who pay more, and foreigners (non-Canadians), who pay even more.
McGill, to speak only of itself, receives many more students from the last two categories, the highest paying, than other universities.
In 2022, 51.2% of McGill students were not residents of Quebec.
I don’t see why the Quebec government – that is, you and me – should subsidize people who come here because it is cheaper and who, in the vast majority, will leave once they have finished their studies.
It is only normal that Quebec’s university funding policy first serves the interests of the French-speaking majority.
But there is more than tuition fees.
University funding also includes operating subsidies from the Quebec government, private donations, product sales, foundation revenues, capital funds, and amounts from federal and Quebec funds financing research.
If you take everything into account, English-speaking universities receive around 30% more per student than French-speaking universities.
This gap exceeds one billion annually, a far cry from the 125 million that we want to give back to French-speaking establishments.
This equalization was in effect until 2015, before Philippe Couillard changed it to please English speakers.
Beginning
This additional income from English-speaking universities also serves as leverage to attract more money and to better negotiate with the banks. Money attracts money.
Worse still, seeing that it is English that attracts, what are HEC and UQAM doing? They offer more English lessons!
If you can’t beat them, join them!
The measures announced by the Legault government should only be the beginning.