Many of you will have seen the stories on Friday concerning a set of policy changes aimed at reducing the number of non-permanent anglophone residents studying in Quebec (see La Presse, The Gazette).  The initial stories were not quite accurate in the sense that what the Government of Quebec announced in this stunningly unhelpful media release did not overtly single out anglophone institutions: they just in practice impact anglophone universities far more than francophone ones.  And what was announced on Friday wasn’t a single announcement on tuition, it was two complicated sets of interrelated policies on tuition and funding. This is not easy for journalists to get their heads around given that none of the Quebec dailies (AFAIK) have an education beat reporter. So, I’m going to give you my best shot at explaining what was announced and what the effects will be.

Before we start, it’s helpful to understand the concept of “montant forfaitaire”.  All provinces have differential fees between domestic and foreign students; Quebec is mostly unique in Canada in having a difference between in-province and out of province students (Nova Scotia has had something small but similar with respect to tuition rebates since 2008).  What is different about Quebec is that the government itself often claims the difference between the two rates.  So, in Quebec, where domestic out-of-province students have been charged higher fees that in-province students since 1996, that difference – known as the “montant forfaitaire” – actually goes straight to the Government of Quebec.  Similarly, until 2018, the difference between domestic and international fees was “forfaitaire” and went to the government.

Got that? 

The first part of the changes announced on Friday concerned international students.  Mostly, what this did was undo the 2018 de-regulation policy which was implemented by the then-governing Liberal Party.  Pre-2018, the government took the entirety of the difference between the international fee and domestic (Quebec) fee (i.e. the MF), but included international students in the enrolment-based funding calculations. Post-2018, the MF was eliminated, institutions were allowed to charge what they wanted to undergraduates and master’s-level professional programs, but international students were thenceforth eliminated from the provincial funding calculations, meaning international students were essentially “off the books,” as they are in Ontario.   As figure 1 shows, this was somewhat more beneficial to anglophone universities, where international students make up roughly 23% of the student body, than to francophone ones, where international students make up 14% of the student body (data is for 2023, courtesy of the Bureau de Coopération Interuniversitaire).  The financial gap between English and French universities is bigger than figure 1 suggests because tuition fees vary from one university to another and tend to be higher at anglophone institutions which can more easily attract international students:

Figure 1: International students as a proportion of total enrolments by institution, Quebec, Fall 2023

Friday’s announcement mostly reversed the 2018 de-regulation.  The MF is back for everything between the Quebec fee and a “minimum threshold” fee (undeclared in the province’s media release but reported to be $20,000); institutions get to keep everything above the threshold.  Best to think of that as a $17,000/international student raid on institutional income by the provincial government.  To balance that off, international students are being put back into the enrolment-based funding equation.  I have no idea what this works out to– it depends on which fields the students are enrolled in at each institution – but my guess is that this offsets about 60% of the loss.  It’s not clear how the balance will be re-distributed across institutions – the Quebec press release implies it will only be delivered to francophone universities, but it’s possible that this just means that it will go to all universities in line with enrolments and francophones universities will be the only net beneficiaries.  As figure 1 shows, no matter how it gets redistributed, it will undoubtedly be good news for Sherbrooke and some of the less internationally minded UQ campuses (e.g. Abitibi-Témiscamingue) and bad news for McGill and Concordia. 

The other part of the announcement concerned Canadian students from outside Québec.  Since 1996, the Government of Québec has charged differential fees to Canadian students from outside Quebec.  This amount was initially pegged to the average of tuition fees in the other nine provinces but has gradually drifted to be higher than that over time (it’s currently about $9,000/year, roughly three times what Quebec students pay for tuition; ancillary fees are charged on top of that).  The difference between the two amounts is – you guessed it – MF.  But, last year, the CAQ government introduced legislation which as of this year removes this extra payment from students if and only if they study in French in a program which was only offered in Quebec (this primarily means any program not offered at University of Ottawa or Université Moncton).  This had no effect on institutional finances – institutions kept the residual anyway because it was forfaitaire – but it did create the precedent that at least some students in French programs would pay less than those in English ones. 

(I was unable to find data on how many students benefit from this policy: my guess is that it affects only a small minority of francophone students.  There are no very solid numbers concerning out-of-province students across the province, but it seems clear that the largest numbers are at McGill and Concordia and the francophone universities combined probably only account for about 20% of the total).

On Friday, the Quebec Government decide to raise the basic out-of-province fee by an amount which was left unspecified in its media release, but which is widely understood, based on government briefings, to be a doubling of fees – that is, to around $18,000/year.  Students already enrolled will not be affected; it will only be applied for students who enrol in 2024 or later.   Again, the entirety of the amount will be forfaitaire, but in a sense that’s irrelevant – the point of this measure is to make Quebec universities – but in particular McGill, Concordia and Bishop’s – financially unattractive to non-Quebecers.  The goal is not for the province to make money from additional revenues from a higher forfaitaire: it is, specifically, to deprive anglophone universities of revenue both by lowering their tuition fee income (a bit) and from reducing their share of the enrollment-driven funding formula (much more important).

So, what are the financial implications of all this?  I can’t give you exact details because none of the institutions provide enough detailed data to work it out, even if the province were less annoyingly vague about details.  But here’s my take, split by policy.

The International Student Policy.  The $17,000“forfaitaire” grab is going to cost McGill and Concordia somewhere between $100 and $150 million each, and Bishop’s around $6.5 million.  Proportionately, this hits Concordia by far the worst: for them this represents 12-13% of total income, whereas for McGill and Bishop’s the proportion is more like that 6-8% of total income.  They will get some of this back through international students being re-instated in the weighted enrolment calculation – how much we don’t know – and possibly some through re-distribution of funds (as noted above it’s not entirely clear how this will work).  And this all kicks in right away, in year one.

The Out-to-Province Student Policy.   The full effect of this will take 3 to 4 years to kick-in because current students are grand-fathered out. But assuming that the higher tuition fee costs Concordia and Bishop’s three-quarters of their out-of-province students and McGill half (McGill’s brand probably makes demand for its spaces a little less elastic than at the other two), then the fully-phased in hit to the three universities from both the loss of fees and enrolment-weighted funding is about $5 million at Bishop’s, $18 million at Concordia and $32 million at McGill; in year one, it will be about 30% of that.

That’s all ceteris paribus, of course.  All institutions will do what they can to raise money in other ways.  All of them, I suspect, will seek more international students to make up for the losses.  McGill might be able to make that work well enough to offset their revenue losses; I suspect it will be more difficult for Bishop’s and Concordia.  There’s no way at this point to really see how it will work out for institutions.  But I can pretty much guarantee you that the way the financial incentives are currently structured, it is deeply unlikely that the Government of Quebec will meet its goal of reducing the number of English-speaking students in Montreal.  International students will simply replace out-of-province ones.

But there’s something else I can guarantee, and that has to do with McGill’s role not in Quebec but in Canada.  For decades, McGill has been the place where talented young Canadians were most likely to choose to gather.  More than any other university in the country, it was always able to attract a healthy numbers of students from one end of the country to the other.  Say what you like about the concept of a “Laurentian elite”, but to the extent that this term has meaning, its homeland is McGill and Montreal.   That, I suspect, is mostly over now.  What the CAQ is fundamentally doing is trying to separate Montreal from the rest of Canada.  To diminish it from a national treasure to purely Quebecois one.  And that is genuinely a national tragedy.