{"id":267482,"date":"2019-09-06T10:31:59","date_gmt":"2019-09-06T14:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/do-we-want-our-universities-to-be-local-or-international\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T22:39:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T02:39:04","slug":"do-we-want-our-universities-to-be-local-or-international","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2019\/09\/do-we-want-our-universities-to-be-local-or-international\/","title":{"rendered":"Do we want our universities to be local or international?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dropcap-big\">Though no one noted it at the time, 2016-17 was actually a momentous year for Canadian post-secondary education.\u00a0For the first time since the 1950s, Canadian universities and colleges collectively received less money from governments than they generated themselves from tuition fees and other sources.\u00a0Though this was in part due to some one-time factors (it was an exceptional year for returns to university endowment funds), there is no chance that this result won\u2019t be the norm in the years to come: for nearly a decade, the country has been firmly on the track of transitioning from a \u201cpublicly funded\u201d system of post-secondary education to one that is merely \u201cpublicly-aided.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><script id=\"infogram_0_58e645cf-7c1d-4d7c-9d5b-0fdfd2d85105\" title=\"Usher fig1\" src=\"https:\/\/e.infogram.com\/js\/dist\/embed.js?m0z\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The cause of this change is not hard to find: it lies in provincial governments\u2019 funding of institutions.\u00a0This peaked at about $22 billion (in constant 2016 dollars) in 2010-11 and has since fallen back by about 5 percent. This decline occurred despite an increase in enrollments; when measured on a per-student basis, the decline in provincial funding is on the order of 15 percent.\u00a0For the most part, these cuts have not been dramatic: in fact, the erosion of provincial funding has been rather quiet: a halt to construction programs here, a nominal freeze in operating grants there.\u00a0But even in the absence of drama, over the space of nearly a decade these small cuts add up.<\/p>\n<p>This provincial funding freeze did not result in a diminution of activity at Canadian universities and colleges.\u00a0Enrolment grew by 21 percent.\u00a0Research output \u2013 both basic and applied \u2013 increased substantially.\u00a0And institutions also coped with much higher IT costs, increased demand for student services, and \u2013 especially \u2013 much higher costs related to an increase in the proportion of students enrolling in expensive STEM programs.\u00a0And to pay for all this, they continued increasing their spending by 2 percent per year over and above inflation.<\/p>\n<p><script id=\"infogram_0_fd964007-b78b-4e87-8c5e-2048576e20bf\" title=\"Usher fig2\" src=\"https:\/\/e.infogram.com\/js\/dist\/embed.js?b5U\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>A public funding freeze and a continued rise in institutional expenditures do not sit easily together. Gradually, a chasm has opened up between the two.\u00a0In 2007-08, the gap between expenditures and provincial grants was $6.1 billion in 2007-08; by 2016-17 that had risen to $12 billion.\u00a0How did institutions close this gap?\u00a0Almost exclusively by increases in tuition revenues, which rose from $8.1 billion to $13.7 billion over the same period.\u00a0 In the early years after 2007-08, these extra fees came through higher domestic enrolment. But demographic change \u2013 specifically, a decline in the number of 18-21-year-olds across most of Canada \u2013 put a limit on this strategy as domestic enrolment in colleges peaked in 2011-12 and in universities in 2013-14.<\/p>\n<p>That left international students, who were an increasingly tempting source of revenue.\u00a0Not only were there an ever-growing supply of them from around the world, but international tuition fees are largely free of government regulation (although outside of Ontario and British Columbia, international fees are still by and large below the cost of educating the average student\u00a0By 2016-17, the number of international students had risen 123 percent over 2007-08 levels, but their fee revenue rose by over 218 percent, leaving institutions roughly $3.25 billion richer than they had been nine years earlier (domestic fee revenue rose by a more modest $2.34 billion).<\/p>\n<p><script id=\"infogram_0_f1eea5cd-6cf9-4ce1-baa6-28524b66c688\" title=\"Usher fig3\" src=\"https:\/\/e.infogram.com\/js\/dist\/embed.js?Sgt\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Canada is not the first country where institutions turned to international students for money when governments proved tight-fisted: this is a route well-trodden by British and Australian universities before us.\u00a0In Australia, nearly a quarter of all university students are from abroad and institutions receive more money from international students than they do from their core teaching grants. Some might view this as a success story: certainly, there are far worse fates than having a post-secondary system of a quality similar to Australia\u2019s.\u00a0But a curious dynamic seems to take hold of countries that go down this route.\u00a0It\u2019s a kind of vicious spiral, where the need for institutions to focus on international students distracts from attention to local communities, which results in reduced support from local communities in favour of provincial funding, which leads to further funding erosion, which leads to even greater focus on international students.\u00a0In Australia, for instance, the rise of private funding has been accompanied by \u2013 and some would say caused \u2013 a drop in real public funding, aided by the perception that a flood of international students led institutions to be \u201cawash with cash.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Up to a certain point, international enrolment at public universities can be enriching (both financially and educationally, in the sense that students benefit from the diverse perspectives that international students can bring).\u00a0But eventually, what happens is that institutions become sensitive to the needs of the student market, only the students to which they are mainly attuned come not from the surrounding community, which pays taxes that go toward the institution, but rather to students from overseas whose post-graduation interests may have little to do with local needs.<\/p>\n<p>If Canada wants to have institutions that focus on local needs and aid their surrounding communities beyond simply attracting students and their wallets, something is going to have to give.\u00a0Either institutions need to rein in spending, or governments need to start spending, or there is some combination of the two).\u00a0There is no fourth option, no unicorn solution that allows us to avoid hard choices.\u00a0Failure to do either of these things puts us on squarely on the road to Canberra, toward a post-secondary education system with ever-increasing international student enrolment that is truly deracinated.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps that\u2019s OK, and a post-secondary education system paid by foreigners and geared towards a foreign market is what Canadians actually want.\u00a0But let\u2019s have that debate openly rather than arrive at this destination through the kind of drift and neglect that has characterized the sector for the past decade.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"image-caption\">Photo:\u00a0Shutterstock, by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shutterstock.com\/g\/joesfhanus\">Josef Hanus<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Do you have something to say about the article you just read? Be part of the\u00a0<\/em>Policy Options<em>\u00a0discussion, and send in your own submission.\u00a0Here is a\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/article-submission\/\"><em>link<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0on how to do it. <\/em><em>|\u00a0Souhaitez-vous r\u00e9agir \u00e0 cet article ? <\/em><em>Joignez-vous aux d\u00e9bats d\u2019<\/em>Options politiques\u00a0<em>et soumettez-nous votre texte en suivant ces\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/article-submission\/\"><em>directives<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Though no one noted it at the time, 2016-17 was actually a momentous year for Canadian post-secondary education.\u00a0For the first time since the 1950s, Canadian universities and colleges collectively received less money from governments than they generated themselves from tuition fees and other sources.\u00a0Though this was in part due to some one-time factors (it was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":276219,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","ep_exclude_from_search":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2025-10-08T02:39:06Z","apple_news_api_id":"a6e5bd66-158d-4a9a-bd7b-9f45cfec5332","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2025-10-08T02:39:06Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/ApuW9ZhWNSpq9e59Fz-xTMg","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false},"categories":[9379,9372],"tags":[8473,8728],"article-status":[],"irpp-category":[4209],"section":[],"irpp-tag":[],"class_list":["post-267482","issues","type-issues","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-recent-stories-fr","tag-post-secondary-education-fr","tag-universites","irpp-category-education"],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- 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