(Montreal) Quebec’s decision to raise tuition fees for students from outside the province starting next year is already putting a strain on high school students and their families.
Posted at 7:42 p.m.
Thomas MacDonald The Canadian Press
Hundreds of teenagers and their families gathered at Concordia University’s downtown campus Saturday to attend the school’s fall open house.
Despite the large turnout, Concordia Director of Student Recruitment Savvy Papayiannis felt the crowd was smaller than previous years.
“There certainly aren’t more people there,” Ms. Papayiannis said by telephone from the event. She could not confirm attendance numbers, but concluded that she felt attendance was declining.
Ms. Papayiannis says her office is already feeling the impact of the tuition hike set to take effect next year, as many potential applicants cancel their campus visits and withdraw from recruiting events.
And since the provincial government’s Oct. 13 announcement, there have been calls and emails from concerned prospective students, she said, with many saying the increase in tuition fees – from $8,992 to around $17,000 a year for outside Canadians Quebec – is an insurmountable financial hurdle.
“We are being criticized more and more every day,” Ms. Papayiannis said.
Several students said at the open house that the increase would impact their college decisions. For 17-year-old Gage Crouchman of Ottawa, that could mean giving up attending school in Quebec.
“It’s a shame,” he lamented. [Pour] This will eliminate Montreal as an option for many students. »
Mr. Crouchman considered Concordia and neighboring McGill University for his undergraduate studies. He said if the government reversed its decision to impose a tuition fee increase, it was still a possibility. Otherwise, “it’s definitely no,” his father assured Cameron.
Coco Clément, a 17-year-old who traveled from Vancouver to Montreal to attend Concordia University, says the new tuition fees are reducing her interest in Quebec because of the added financial burden.
“It’s extremely expensive and I don’t want to come here so often just because it’s one more thing I have to overcome,” Ms Clément said.
Although 16-year-old Kees Lokker and his father from Grimsby, Ont., say their family could afford the new tuition, about $17,000, Kees Lokker fears that amount will deprive his friends of options.
“It’s just going to get harder for them to get enough money to go to Concordia or even a university like McGill,” the 16-year-old said.
He’s considering the province’s renowned engineering and aerospace programs, but his father says the increase will encourage them to more seriously consider options in Ontario, the United States and Europe.
Decline of French in Quebec
According to preliminary data from Statistics Canada for the 2023–2024 school year, undergraduate tuition of about $17,000 would be the highest in the country for domestic students and the highest outside of specialized degree programs in law, management, dentistry, medicine, veterinary medicine and pharmacy.
“I don’t think that’s fair,” said Jaco Lokker, referring to tuition fees in other provinces.
Quebec argued that this increase would allow it to cover the cost of education for non-residents of Quebec. The provincial government also plans to charge universities $20,000 for each international student they recruit. Premier François Legault defended the decision, emphasizing that Quebec taxpayers should not be required to subsidize students from outside the province.
This measure is likely to particularly affect Quebec’s three English-speaking universities – Concordia, McGill and Bishop’s – which admit more non-Quebecers than French-speaking schools. Government members cited a decline in French proficiency in the province in their decision to increase tuition fees. Mr Legault argued on Tuesday that the influx of English-speaking students “endangers the survival of the French language”.
Quebec is committed to reinvesting the recovered funds in the French-speaking university network.