By Ruby Pratka
Local Journalism Initiative
Bishop’s University Principal and Vice-Chancellor Sébastien Lebel-Grenier has said proposed changes to the province’s university fee structure announced last week could pose an “existential” threat to the Lennoxville institution.
On Oct. 13, Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry announced the province would essentially double university tuition fees for out-of-province students in undergraduate and professional master’s degree programs at Quebec universities. Fees for international students, whose tuition is already several times higher than what Quebec students pay, are also expected to rise slightly. The measure would apply to new students as of the 2024-2025 school year; fees for current students will remain the same until they finish their degree.
International students whose home countries have a reciprocity agreement with Quebec are exempt, as are doctoral students and those in research-based masters programs. Déry alluded to possible future exemptions for students from francophone communities outside Quebec, although no such exemptions were announced.
Déry argued that most Canadian students from outside Quebec leave at the end of their studies, and the change meant Quebec taxpayers would no longer subsidize out-of-province students who took advantage of Quebec’s relatively low tuition fees and then returned home to work. She did not cite data supporting her premise.
The proposal received immediate backlash from English-speaking educational institutions. Celine Cooper, managing director of the Consortium of English-language CEGEPs, Colleges and Universities of Quebec, said institutions reacted with “profound disappointment.”
“The measures announced on Friday are counterproductive. They will have serious and far-reaching consequences not only for Quebec’s higher education sector in the broadest sense, but also for Quebec’s economy, workforce development and international reputation,” Cooper told the BCN. “These new measures, coupled with recent changes to the Quebec Experience Program [for international students], are likely to discourage thousands of international students from choosing Quebec. The price point will be prohibitive for many out-of-province students, [and] we expect that Quebec’s English universities will see a significant drop in enrollments from out-of-province students.”
While Déry emphasized that the policy change, applied to all universities, “was not a measure against anglophones,” it will have a disproportionate impact on Quebec’s three English-language universities, McGill, Concordia and Bishop’s, which welcome the lion’s share of students from other provinces. Déry said revenue from international and out-of-province student fees “creates a significant imbalance” between the French and English university systems. Between 2019 and 2022, according to the ministry, English-language universities gained a total of $282 million in extra revenue from international and out-of-province student fees, compared to a combined $46 million for the 10 public French-language universities in the Université du Québec network and an estimated $79 million for French-language universities outside the network. “I have to reduce this imbalance so our French-language universities can shine and grow,” said Déry. The extra income from the fee increase will “give the ministry the means to … better support the francophone network” while “putting the brakes on the anglicization of Montreal,” she argued.
None of that is any consolation to Lebel-Grenier, who said the announcement came “out of nowhere.”
“We got a two-day advance warning that this policy was going to be put in place; there was no consultation,” he told the BCN. “We received a letter in late spring telling us the minister was concerned about out-of-province students…but there was no invitation to discuss.” He said he was “expecting a conversation on how we can be better partners for unilingual anglophone students who want to learn French – not punitive measures.”
Nearly one in three Bishop’s students are from other provinces and one in six are international. Lebel-Grenier said he “fully expects” many prospective out-of-province students to reconsider their plans. That would have a potentially “catastrophic” impact on the university’s finances, with preliminary projections suggesting at least 25 per cent of the academic budget would vanish, affecting “our ability to go on as a university,” he said.
The school’s culture would also take a significant hit. “We’ve always been premised on welcoming students from across Canada, and the diversity of our community is what makes Bishop’s an incredible place to learn and grow as a person,” he said.
Lebel-Grenier said the university was receiving calls from “distraught” parents and prospective students. Beyond the financial impacts of the fee increase, “they are seeing this [announcement] as a message that they aren’t welcome.”
“A lot of students come to Bishop’s because they are curious about Quebec and they want to stay and learn French,” he added. “We don’t have data [on how many graduates stay on], but we have a lot of great stories of people who have stayed.”
Déry said she was “sensitive to” the school’s situation, but could not make an exemption to the policy for a single school.