All Posts Tagged With: "Quebec Universities"
Why aren’t we talking about differentiated fees?
Calls for Quebec to charge different rates for different programs hardly being talked about in the wake of education summit
As I mentioned a few days ago, the Quebec government had a big summit on the future of universities in the province on Dec. 6. While the discussion was pretty far reaching much of it, and most of the attention paid to the meeting, was focused on the upcoming tuition increases.
But one of the big questions hanging over future of tuition in Quebec hardly seems to have come up, the question of differentiated tuition.
Back in late August and early September, when university administrators were presenting to the National Assembly’s education and culture committee, administrators from both McGill and the Université de Montréal made a big deal about the issue but hardly anything has been said in public since.
Right now, all university students in Quebec pay the same per-credit fee no matter what they’re studying or what level they’re at. But there have been calls, especially from some university administrators, for that to change. Their argument is that since some programs cost more to teach, students should pay a larger share of that cost. According to Université de Montréal rector, Guy Breton, students in veterinary medicine pay just five per cent of the cost of education, while students in literature pay 40 per cent. There’s also the argument that since some carriers lead to higher salaries, students in those programs should pay more.
But even university administrators are divided on the issue. At the same time as McGill and U de M were calling for differentiated tuition, Claude Corbo, rector of the Université du Québec à Montréal told the education and culture committee that expected salary shouldn’t be relevant, since graduates with higher salaries will pay more taxes — no matter what program they studied in.
Even with flat tuition some programs — like medicine — are already drawing a particularly small number of students from low-income backgrounds. According to Breton, only five per cent of medical students at U de M come from poor backgrounds, while 45 per cent of medical students have backgrounds among the richest 20 per cent of the population.
The government hasn’t said much on the issue but they have sent some mixed messages. When McGill “privatized” their executive MBA program — refusing provincial funding for the program and increasing tuition to over $20,000 — the provincial government condemned the move, but they haven’t actually taken any action.
New statistics show the realities of student life in Quebec
Students are paying for a significant portion of their education
There have been some really interesting statistics on students and universities coming out of Quebec over the past few days.
On Thursday, the province’s largest student lobby group released the results of a major study (in French) on student finances. On Monday, the Conference of Rectors and Principals of Quebec Universities posted a lot of statistics, on things like enrolment and finances at every university in the province, on their website.
The Fédération étudiante universitaire du Québec study is definitely more interesting, some of the numbers posted by the Conference were hard to find but they were all available.
The scope of the FEUQ study is notable. Eight per cent of students in the province participated and it’s got some bonafides. It was sponsored by the Millenium Scholarship Foundation and Desjardins Foundation, the charitable arm of Quebec’s largest chain of credit unions. It was also carried out by a third-party market research company.
The main take-away is the importance of working, the average full-time student works 18 hours a week and that accounts, on average, for over 50 per cent of their finances. For part time students work accounts for over 80 per cent of their finances.
Parents also account for a large portion of student financing, especially for full-time students, more than any other source except for work.
The other thing that really struck me is that over 20 per cent of part-time students have children of their own and most of them say they’re struggling to maintain a balance between their family and their studies.
Student groups fight the right
Tuition issue is indicative of new political debate facing Quebec
Quebec’s largest student lobby group, along with the province’s main trade federations held a conference this weekend to talk about why the government shouldn’t increase tuition fees. Alliances between the student lobby and organized labour are common in Quebec. Last spring some of these groups got together to criticize proposals for the provincial budget, but this was more than a one-off event. It was the first step in a mobilization by labour and student groups, calling themselves the “Alliance sociale,” against Quebec’s resurgent right wing and this could be a sign of a fundamental shift happening in Quebec politics.
Since the Quiet Revolution, the Quebe politics have been dominated by identity issues such as sovereignty and language. The main political divide has been nationalism versus federalism, rather than some form of left versus right.
It is telling that none of the federal parties have affiliates in Quebec’s provincial politics (despite the name, the Quebec Liberals cut ties with the federal Liberals in the 1950s) and even though Quebec has a left-wing reputation, NDP candidates have only won a seat three times in the province.
At the federal level, left-leaning voters in Quebec have generally voted for the Bloc, which has supported a broadly left-wing outlook, even though Lucien Bouchard had been cabinet minister in Brian Mulroney’s government and several of his BQ co-founders were also former Progressive Conservatives.
At the provincial level, the national question has also dominated politics. While the Parti Québécois does fall to the left of the Quebec Liberals, until recently both parties have supported a large role for the state with a strong social safety net. Jean Charest’s recent cuts and tuition increases may be unpalatable to the left but they’re seen as timid by the right.
Until recently Quebec’s right had been relatively quiet. Since 1970, only the Liberals and the PQ have held power. Between 1976, the last time any members of the Union Nationale were elected, and 2007, when the Action Démocratique du Québec became the official opposition, there was almost no right wing presence in the National Assembly. Of course, the ADQ was not able to maintain that momentum.
But lately Quebec’s right has been making more noise.
The current context for Quebec’s right-wing resurgence comes from a 2005 manifesto issued by a group of “prominent” Quebecers, including Bouchard. Their “clear-eyed,” or “lucide,” vision for Quebec, among other points, included a call for higher tuition. Bouchard and his prominent friends were back last February, again calling for a tuition increase.
Interestingly both the left and this new right agree on one thing, that Quebec’s universities are underfunded. They just don’t agree on whether students should pay a bigger share or if that task should fall to the government.
But while student groups are lining up against this vision of Quebec, university administrators are joining up with the right wing. Concordia president Judith Woodsworth was named to the board of directors of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal on Nov. 2. That group issued a statement in late September calling for tuition increases and essentially endorsing a “lucide” vision for post-secondary education. McGill principal Heather Munroe-Blum’s presentation to the National Assembly’s education and culture commission in September outlined a very similar vision.
There’s a lot more to this growing left-right divide than tuition fees, but the issue is indicative of the new debate in Quebec society and the breakdown of the old consensus on what role the state plays in society, what services it provides and how that’s paid for.
Mcgill and Quebec play chicken
A tuition hike for MBA students is opposed by the province; so far neither side has blinked
McGill University and the Quebec government have been locked in a stare-down ever since the school announced last year it would no longer abide by provincial caps on tuition fees for its M.B.A. program. The province promptly kicked up a fuss, and even threatened to fine the school for its insolence. So far, neither side has blinked—even though students are back in class and their tuition bills are in the mail. “We’re still in the same place we were several months ago,” says Peter Todd, the dean of McGill’s Desautels Faculty of Management. “We’ve made it clear we’re going ahead.”
The 56 students entering McGill’s M.B.A. program this fall will shell out $29,500 a year for the privilege. That’s about 15 times what Quebec residents will pay in tuition for any other master’s program at McGill, and more than five times as much as out-of-province Canadians. McGill’s M.B.A. fees are hardly out of whack with those of other top-tier programs across the country—Canadian residents beginning their M.B.A. studies this fall at the University of Toronto will have paid about $75,000 in tuition before the end of the two-year program, while those at the University of Western Ontario will be out $68,500 for its one-year program. (Like the University of Toronto’s, McGill’s is a two year program.) The big difference is McGill didn’t wait for the government’s permission to announce the hike.
This past spring, Quebec’s then-education minister Michelle Courchesne lashed out at the university, reminding it that “tuition fees are set by the government.” Courchesne also threatened to claw back $28,000 in funding to the university—$11,000 of which would have been the province’s share of funding for M.B.A. students—for each student registered in the program if McGill went ahead with the hike. However, Courchesne was never given the opportunity to follow through on the threat; she was shuffled out of the education portfolio last month and replaced with Line Beauchamp.
Beauchamp declined to be interviewed, but a ministry spokesperson acknowledges there hasn’t been any movement on the issue, since “the new minister hasn’t yet had time to work on the file.” That means McGill still isn’t sure what to expect from the government in the coming months, though Todd says the school can absorb the fine should the province choose to impose it. “If we have to deal with some issues with the government in the short term, we’re absolutely committed to doing that,” he says. “We don’t see that we have a lot of choice.”
The spat is the latest in a growing list of ideological battles between supporters of Quebec’s cap on tuition and those who say it starves the province’s universities of much-needed funding. In 2007, the Jean Charest government announced it would hike university fees by $100 a year for the next five years—the first increase since 1994. But three years later, critics say Quebec’s universities are still teetering on a financial precipice.
At a speech to the Canadian Club this past June, McGill principal Heather Munroe-Blum argued, “The biggest obstacles to our universities’ success are the outdated objects of our ambition and underfunding.” Her complaints echoed those of a group of 16 prominent Quebecers, including former premier Lucien Bouchard and former finance minister Monique Jérôme-Forget, who in February called for the deregulation of tuition fees. “Quebec’s universities are hurting,” Bouchard said in a statement signed by the group. “The condition is not incurable, but it is chronic.” However, the call for reforms has yet to find a receptive audience either with the government or the opposition.
While the Charest government has agreed to hold wide-ranging talks this fall on university funding, its stance on McGill’s decision to privatize its M.B.A. program makes clear it’s not yet willing to relinquish its role in setting fees. In that sense, the Liberals are on much the same page as the opposition Parti Québécois, which argues deregulation would undermine Quebec’s increasingly unique egalitarian approach to post-secondary funding. “If we’re going to raise the issue of tuition fees, it’s not with the idea of having the state disengage itself,” says PQ post-secondary education critic Marie Malavoy. “By making such a provocative move, what McGill University is doing is calling into question the model of Quebec universities.”
Todd rejects the notion that McGill is charting a revolutionary course with its expensive new M.B.A. program. “We’re at the end of a chain of this kind of transformation across the country,” he says, “not at the vanguard of it.” And he’d be right, of course, if McGill were anywhere else but Quebec.
McGill privatizes MBA program
Tuition fees to rise to $29,500
The Master’s of Business Administration program at McGill University will be moving to a completely self-funded model this fall, effectively privatizing the program. McGill had announced in September its intentions to transition a related program, the executive MBA, to a self-funded model. Both programs will forfeit public funding and increase tuition to $29,500 per year, up from just over $3,200. Tuition for most students at McGill is set at just over $1,100.
In January, the provincial government threatened to decrease McGill’s operating grant if it went ahead with its plans for the executive MBA. Education Minister Michelle Courchesne has said that the university didn’t seek the government’s permission to increase fees.
According to the Desautels Faculty of Management, the two MBA programs were running a deficit of about $10,000 per student, which has required other faculties to heavily subsidize them.
