A thread about college got me thinking. In the US, you pay more money to go to a college than the residents of the state the college is located in. I was wondering if they do that in other countries.
McGill University in Canada has reduced tuition rates for Quebec residents and higher tuition for out of province students. Universities in the west have the same tuition for all Canadian residents and as far as I know that’s how it works in Ontario and the Maritime provinces. There is a much higher tuition charged for international students, since university here is subsidized through taxes.
This is what I was getting at. To my knowledge, in all American schools international students pay the same price as someone from another state. 
That logic really escapes me.
Please note the OP refers exclusively to State-funded colleges, not to all universities: the one I attended was private and did not differentiate in-State vs “the rest of the world”. Every uni I looked at which had “State” in its name had this distinction; the ones without it generally did not (and those which did were State-funded).
Spanish public-system universities are cheaper than private ones, but AFAIK there is no distinction by reason of citizenship. I don’t know of any Spanish private universities which have different tuition costs depending on citizenship. I do think such a distinction might be considered anti-constitutional (“Discrimination by reason of nationality” and contrary to the Universal Right to Education). Foreign students will be paying the same taxes as local ones while they attend our universities, after all, so that argument doesn’t really work.
The Scottish private university I attended a couple of years ago had different tuition costs for EU and non-EU students, you paid about 40% less if you were from the EU.
Korea’s so small and everything is centered in Seoul, so no resident discounts. The more rural colleges might offer them, I suppose.
There is state funding for the public state colleges, which is why in-state students get a break on tuition (their parents have been paying state taxes). Why would it surprise you that out of state and international students pay the same? Neither of those have been contributing any state taxes to fund the school.
Not only McGill University: every university in Québec. The province subsidizes higher education for Québec residents, making university tuition rates lower than the national rate and nearly fully paying for Cégep (post secondary, pre-university or professional/technical colleges). The province controls the tuition rates. It’s one of the perks of the very high tax rates we enjoy, and on a bit of a WAG, I think it has it’s roots in the Quiet Revolution, when the province recognized the need to make education accessible to everyone.
Canadian residents pay a Canadian rate in Québec universities; it really is about the same as any other undergraduate rate in any other province. I think that rate is more or less the same everywhere for competition reasons; schools want to attract the best students, but there might be other factors (such as government regulations) that also play a role.
International students (from the US and elsewhere) pay significantly more than either Québec residents or Canadians. There are modified rates at some schools (maybe all?) for residents from certain francophone speaking nations, though I don’t know the details.
In the UK it’s complicated, depending on whether you are English, Welsh or Scottish, and whether you’re studying in England, Wales or Scotland.
Full details here: Tuition fees in the United Kingdom - Wikipedia
It does vary, engineering tuition is about half as much in the western provinces compared to Ontario and recently the Maritime provinces have been lowering their tuition fees trying to attract more students there.
Why does the logic escape you? Every state is a sovreign entity funding it’s own higher educational system. People from other states have the exact same relationship to a state-funded university as a person from another country does – they are not taxpayers in that state.
Thanks for that link - I didn’t think to look at StatsCan for this information. I just went by my own knowledge and experience (I have an undergrad degree from Ontario and Québec, and my husband has an engineering undergrad from Ontario, which is my degree from Québec…!)
I just had a sense that most places charged about $5000 a year (though my mental number is probably tuition+fees.)
This is generally true in the US. Basically, it is based on State residency e.g. if you are a Virginia resident (and have been one for a minimum period), you can attend any Virginia public institution (e.g. Virginia Tech, UVA, George Mason U, James Madison U, VCU, etc.) and pay in-state tuition. It doesn’t matter where in the state you live - so you can live way out in, say, Wise near the Cumberland Gap in Appalachia and pay in-state tuition to VCU in Richmond or George Mason in Fairfax, both of them hundreds of miles away.
Private schools generally don’t have this distinction - there is a basic rate for everyone.
Is it just being from the Francophone country, or is it being a native Francophone or being fluent in French? E.g. do Louisiana Cajuns get a francophone rate?
Even state colleges aren’t wholly supported by the state, or even mostly. To take two examples: UC Berkely gets 28% of its funding from the state, and 19% from the federal government. UIdaho gets 28% from the state and 30% from the feds.
I don’t know Idaho’s sitch as well as Berkeley, but I do know that some of that federal money is specifically research grants for Berkeley (big research university and all that), but even so, that’s a pretty significant chunk of income that’s being supported by US taxpayers, which an international student isn’t paying for. As I recall, Berkeley doesn’t differentiate between international and out-of-state students, but I could see an argument for it.
That’s correct and also true for all universities in Quèbec. The rates are (last I looked) around $2000 for residents of Quèbec, $3000 for other Canadians, and $10,000 for others, maybe more by now. I once asked an American student why he had come to McGill and he said because it was cheaper then SUNY (he was from Albany and there is a branch of SUNY there, so he could have saved living costs).
I still think people of the same country should get pay a cheaper price than international students. People in the same country pay taxes and should have some incentive to stay in the country for college.
They do. Try getting a job as an attorney with a foreign law degree.
Only 1% of Americans study abroad, so apparently they don’t need any incentive to stay home for school.
Having googled a little, it seems to be a France-Québec agreement that recognizes various levels of post-secondary schooling so that students of each state can study in the other one with minimal hindrance and to recognize degree equivalence in various fields. Here is a link regarding the accord, in French. As a result of the agreement, French students pay Québec tuition rates when studying in Québec (and, it seems, vice-versa).
I suppose it’s possible that Québec has similar agreements with other states - I don’t know that Louisiana is one of them. French citizens with a baccalauréat français are considered to be at the same level as Québec students who have a Cégep diploma, and are thus eligible to enter the first year of university.
The alternative is to enter what McGill calls “Year Zero”, which is a year of general education requirements…for example Physics, Chemistry, Calculus, Linear Algebra, etc for Engineering students. These courses are covered in Cégep, but students from the rest of Canada and the US are considered to have not taken the appropriate level in these topics and must complete this first year of school before starting their degrees. Cégep and French Baccalaureate students go straight into program-specific classes.