By Anthony Ouellet
Québec has spoken: the government of the Parti Québécois (PQ), a sovereignist party which promised to add more regulation to international students who wish to study in a Québec university. This could prove beneficial to smaller universities, such as Bishop’s, according to an expert.
In 2018, the then liberal provincial government deregulated tuition fees for most international students wishing to study in Québec. Previously, the government had set these fees and redistributed the funds amongst all universities, following an equalization-style model.
Photo courtesy of Anthony Ouellet
Following the deregulation, universities could decide how each one of them charged international students and pocket all of the prof- its, something that pitted universi- ties in Québec against one another for the international students “market”, according to Samuel-Élie Les- age, an associate researcher at the Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéoconomiques.
This deregulation, Lesage said, greatly benefited McGill University and, to a far lesser extent, Concordia University. “Because of these changes, McGill could increase the tuition for international students drastically, whilst remaining far more ac- cessible than Harvard or Yale”, he adds.
Smaller universities were disadvantaged in this model. The last CAQ government tried to cut what Lesage referred to as an “im- balance”. It implemented a hybrid model where the government gets to impose a basic tuition fee for international students, but universities can impose an unlimited fee of their own.
However, the new leading party in Québec parliament, the PQ, wishes to “review the policy regulating the funding of universities regarding international students using the bases that were in place before 2018”, according to its electoral platform. “Are these changes going to bring more stable and foreseeable income for Bishop’s? Maybe. In a sense, I hope they do”, Lesage stated.
As BU is already struggling with budget cuts in recent years, this potential rise in governmental funding may prove very useful. However, there’s a risk that some international students may pay more tuition than if there were still deregulation.
More funds
As universities still greatly rely on tuition fees to stay afloat, many of them, supported by numerous groups and institutions, want to see the government give them more money annually. “I personally strongly agree that we should give more money to universities”, Lesage claimed.
Earlier this year, The Campus revealed that Bishop’s University administration thinks that not much effort is made by the Quebec government to cover the cost of inflation in its funding of universities.
