It started in another thread as a diversion, but I would like to respond. I am in agreement that foreign students should pay more.
Generations of my family have contributed, continuously, over their lifetimes to the quality education system we enjoy. Including the expensive university system.
My tuition should be reasonable, as a result.
Most all of the foreign students that come to Canada, and there are thousands, come from privileged backgrounds. They are the offspring of successful business tycoons or the historically privileged often coming from homes with driver, cooks and other servants.
Their real impact on the housing situation is because they can afford to by a home, right off the plane.
They should be paying more. If necessary then means test it. Offering substantial discount those who don’t come from wealth. But no way should they get the socialized price point for their education, after contributing only for a few years.
Any Canadian student should be able to study in any Canadian province at the same cost as students in that province.
The idea “foreign students should contribute the real cost of education” is not without flaws. Many of the costs of education are fixed and not substantially changed by having more students. There is a lot of wiggle room in saying what these costs are. A lot of foreign students would like to remain in Canada where they will pay future taxes. We need skilled immigrants. The ones we want should be permitted a path to citizenship.
I admire countries that more fully subsidize and support tertiary education. I don’t find it unreasonable to charge foreign students more. But this amount has increased astronomically, and beyond reason. It isn’t paying “the real cost” but is instead often a substantial source of university funding, replacing the primary research governments should be better supporting.
Some students to prestigious programs are well off. This is a minority of those who study in Canada. There are many happy to take low wage jobs to get by. A few wealthy students may buy homes in Vancouver. The situation is different in Cape Breton, and the students are there because local universities advertised for them in India without full amenities always being locally available.
That said, I think those here to study should be studying. Canada has the luxury of selecting better students and should be cognizant of anticipating future social and economic needs.
You’re naive to believe it’s not the majority that come from privilege. And nearly all foreign students who graduate have a simple and easy path to citizenship, I know someone who just did so, you automatically can apply after certain amount of time, it’s not especially hard to do.
And you’re even more naive to believe it’s only in Vancouver where foreign students buy houses. I live in a town with a large university. The impact of them purchasing homes has been shocking.
Keep in mind, when they finally reacted to the housing crisis, by forbidding foreigners to purchase, they exempted foreign students. And for a reason. It’s honestly not uncommon for them to buy two houses, because they can! Sometimes they subdivide it into 15 or 20 bed spaces, and rent them out to desperate poor students. Such things have never been an issue in this city before.
A good chunk of the foreign students here, have very expensive brand new cars. They don’t obey parking regs because it’s just a fine, they can pay!
The real situation is far different from as you are imagining it, I assure you.
I think there’s a moral issue with balancing the university budget on the backs of the foreign students. Many of these non-Canadian students stay and become Canadians, though obviously not all. Moreover, there is a net benefit to the country of having people elsewhere who spent four years of their youth here.
It’s also worth remembering that a large subset of the foreign students are from the USA, which doesn’t usually ping people’s “foreign” radar.
The current trend is to try to get the universities to pay for themselves, but as they are actually investments in the future, I disagree with this trend.
I will add, just while we’re here, that many foreign students with English (or presumably French further east) as a second language come in with inadequate abilities, and the universities don’t offer sufficient support. My feeling is that you either admit people and help them succeed, or don’t admit them; admitting them for the cash benefits while setting them up to fail is cruel.
I agree that university budgets ought not rely on overcharging foreign students. They are taking full advantage, they should not be. There needs to be a cap to stop that, at this point I believe.
In the year 2022, the top three countries for foreign students in Canada were; India, China, Philippines. Together they represent dangerously close to a half a million students. American students rank ninth, 14,465 students.
It is not actually as you are imagining I’m afraid.
The way we do it in Argentina, and that is now in danger as described in the thread where this discussion originated, is simple:
If you are a resident you have the same access to the public universities as any citizen.
A resident pays the same taxes as any citizen, VAT every time he buys something, income tax, etc.
You can object that they haven’t paid during the years they didn’t live here, and that’s correct, but the amount of money lost seems pretty trivial compared to the benefits:
Our universities are enriched by having people with different perspectives in them.
Many of them stay here at least some years (a good many forever) and put their skills to the benefit of our society (The last 3 times me and my family went to the clinic for emergencies the doctor was from Venezuela or Colombia)
It projects soft power, those who come here to study carry our world view back to their home countries when they go back.
But even more important: it’s the right thing to do, higher education is a human right no matter where you were born.
(we do the same thing with public health to the eternal chagrin of the right-wing, yeah we know that in other countries foreigners have to pay for health care, we are not other countries we are the friggin Argentina Republic, home of Messi, Maradona and free public universities and healthcare)
(of course, there is a lot to improve in public health-care, you CAN use the public hospital and forego health insurance but if you have the money, sadly, you’ll better take insurance just to avoid unnecessary wait times and badly maintained buildings, secure in the knowledge that if for any reason your health insurance fails to help you the public hospitals will save your life (this happens all the time) )
I would expect this is something you would want, because then they will be contributing to Canadian taxes after their college education and helping to repay whatever subsidization they may have had.
Again, how do you know this to be true? I would like to introduce you to the concept of “confirmation bias.”
Why is that number “dangerous?” What is the risk you are concerned with? Would you be as concerned if the US and UK were among those three countries, or is this about people who look different?
About a third of the students at my undergraduate university were not Canadian. They paid 50% more tuition, which seemed reasonable. I admire the Argentinian emphasis on free education, but this is also slightly easier if only 4% of the students are foreign.
I got into a medical school where many of the students were from Quebec or America. Only five spots were reserved for “out of province” Canadians. But the medical school I actually attended was just Canadians (except for one year where they hosted a few wealthy Malaysians). However, some non-domestic students did buy their way into many residency spots, and these did tend to be wealthy individuals, but they often were seeking education and not citizenship.
I have talked with many non-domestic university students. Some are wealthy but more are not. For example, Korean students have told me they came to Canada because they couldn’t get into the one or two universities there considered very prestigious. Persian students have told me university admissions in Iran are highly biased, difficult, and might depend on connections, affording expensive tutors or even criminal groups (I am not able to evaluate the truth of this claim).
Various students from South Asia valued long term Canadian citizenship as much as the education. These snippets do not represent data; they were just people I talked to. They might not be typical. Sure, a few are wealthy and drive too quickly and buy houses but these aren’t the majority. (One might expect some very wealthy foreigners to perhaps prefer the cachet of Oxford or Ivy League schools). Whereas Canadian students might pay C$8,000 annual tuition for a non-professional undergraduate university program, non-Canadians might now pay C$40,000-$50,000 which seems excessive, although there may be other circumstances and these are overgeneralized numbers. I was quite surprised when students said they were paying so much. Most of the ones I talked to could not easily afford that, and took on as much extra work as they could find. The amount was so high I didn’t believe it, but looking it up these numbers were true. That is not, surely, the “real cost” of a degree in history or undergraduate biology.
However, if a government were to allow the annual number of non-domestic students to increase from 100,000 (when I was an undergraduate) to 800,000 (2022), even if only (say) 10% came from relatively wealthy families, I concede this might cause changes in some markets.
It’s not dangerous, but the total came within 100 students of being half a million.
My bad for using such a word, I honestly didn’t foresee this as an issue.
Yes, it is something we want, I was simply refuting the claim they ‘ should have’ a path… they do, it’s well used. No one has issue with that. At all. Once they are citizens they can sponsor their families. Also, not a problem, not the issue.
I have zero against foreign students. I love them. Roomed entirely with them when I was at the university, many years back. Live where there is a large university, very popular with many foreign students.
The issue is should they get the ‘socialized’ tax supported rate or should they pay more? Even back when I attended they all paid more.
I have no problem means testing it, kids on scholarships and low income kids get the lower rate. But tax payers shouldn’t subsidize a low tuition for the children of the elite classes of other countries.
We could easily absorb such for the less than 150,000 students Argentina takes, but Canada takes near to a million foreign students in a year. (They do get healthcare like Argentina though!)
I don’t really see this as a that radical an idea, to be honest.
Yes, that was then. I was a student then as well. But that is not how it is now. Universities no longer favour such students, as they once did unfortunately.
I’d much rather go back to those type of students. Happy to subsidize that.
I’ve got one kid at McGill who is paying a lot more than Québécois students because we happen to live 500km west of the provincial line. If kid #2 wants to go to McGill in 2 years, we will paying double the Quebec rate. And that’s for someone WITH a Canadian passport.
Actually that’s been an issue here. There’s been traditionally, since the uni was founded, a nun run college just for women. It’s on campus but it’s a big campus. When I was at uni it was heavily weighted with female foreign students usually taking a prelim year. My roommates all had.
But it’s a big gothic building, hard to maintain etc. In the end the nuns couldn’t keep it up and earlier this year it was announced it would now be integrated fully with the uni, the board would take over running it, etc., ( it was already fully accredited and students got the exact same diplomas etc.)
Well there was a large outcry that I think caught people off guard. But a lot of female students said they resented that a rare university level, all female space, would now be lost.
They made very clear and valid arguments and the uni is reconsidering.
I don’t disagree with this (and I’m not Canadian either), but this is where you need hard data about how many foreign college students who get subsidized tuition are actually the children of elite classes of other countries. This is someone with influence builds a fire under the government, where a government committee digs into the data and makes a report and a recommendation. Lacking hard data like that, it’s going to be hard to build support for your concerns.
I’m not Canadian but my understanding from reading articles such as this one (gift link) is that foreign students pay more. “Annual tuition varies by major, but for foreign students, it is generally around 16,000 Canadian dollars, about four and a half times what Canadian students pay.”