Ontario’s colleges and universities are looking to Thursday’s provincial budget for answers on how they will make room for thousands more foreign students, saying current tuition levels are not enough to pay for new buildings and extra classes.
Premier Dalton McGuinty has plans to increase foreign enrolment by 50 per cent, or about 18,000 students, over five years, and has cast the ambitious new policy as a way to build the economy and bring needed revenue to the postsecondary system. The province “could use the funds this generates to help expand our schools for our kids,” he told a Toronto audience days before making the initiative a centrepiece of the Throne Speech. The speech also pledged to add 20,000 new spots on college and university campuses to respond to rising local demand.
As they wait for details in this week’s budget, campus leaders say foreign tuition fees currently do not generate enough money to pay for campus expansion.
“By and large, I can tell you they are not money-making,” said Bonnie Patterson, president of the Council of Ontario Universities and the former leader of Trent University in Peterborough.
It is important to distinguish between economic impact for the province and extra money for individual universities, she said. She also noted that any move to increase foreign fees might only drive students to other provinces or countries.
Schools in Ontario are free to set their own fees for foreign students and can keep any extra money those fees generate. Foreign tuition fees tend to be more than double the level charged to local students, depending on the program. But schools do not receive provincial grants for foreign students, which narrows the gap between total money collected for Canadians and students from abroad.
How lucrative foreign students are to a campus also is affected by their course of study and whether there are empty spaces to fill. Foreign students enrolled in graduate programs usually come with a cost, since most get university funding – such as scholarships or graduate teaching posts – as part of their recruitment offer.
“A lot will depend on where these students go,” said Glen Jones, an associate dean at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and a co-editor of a new book on globalization at Canadian campuses.
Enrolment demand in the Toronto area is expected to increase dramatically in the coming decade, but schools in other parts of the province are struggling to maintain student numbers. “If this is a strategy to rebalance enrolment, there is a certain logic to that. If it creates more pressure on GTA institutions, and displaces local students, that is not in anybody’s interest,” he said.
At Ryerson University, where demand for undergraduate spots has increased by double digits in recent years, president Sheldon Levy said increasing foreign enrolment is the right thing to do, but can’t happen at the expense of local students. “I am looking forward to working with the province to know how we can do this while accommodating the pressures of the GTA,” he said.
At colleges, already coping with swelling enrolments thanks to the troubled job market, making space for more students also presents a challenge. “If we see a surge in domestic demand, I don’t think there is any question there will be a demand for capital expansion,” said Linda Franklin, president of Colleges Ontario. “Our assumption is that if the government is making such a major investment in foreign students, they understand the funding commitments that will be necessary.”
Others stressed that increasing foreign enrolment cannot be driven by dollars alone. The University of Waterloo aims to double foreign undergraduates to 20 per cent by 2017 to improve the experience of all students, president David Johnston said. Adding more foreign students, he said, “is a net benefit to the university and Ontario.”
A recent study for the federal government estimated that foreign students spent about $6.5-billion on tuition, accommodation and other expenses in 2008, a figure widely quoted to support increasing enrolment.
Ontario’s Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities uses figures from this federal study to support its plans, noting that long-term international students contribute an estimated $1.6-billion to the province’s gross domestic product and provide nearly $103-million in additional government revenue.
