Tuition justice

Recently, the National Post and Canadian Press reported that since 2021, 70 percent of all tuition paid to Ontario’s post-secondary schools comes from international students. The federal government is planning to reduce the number of foreign students because too many are being used as cash cows for our own domestic educational programs. In addition, housing thousands of foreign students is becoming especially difficult in these times of prohibitive rental costs and limited housing availability in our major cities.

The cost of a Christian school

I recently examined a copy of the Christian College Guide. The Guide provides information about 37 Canadian Bible colleges, seminaries and Christian universities. Statistics provided for each entry include the cost of tuition (excluding housing, food and textbook costs) for both domestic students and international students. What I found interesting about some of these data are the significant differences in these institutions’ overall tuition costs. Why, for example, is Trinity Western University’s domestic tuition 2.2 times higher than Redeemer’s, and over 1.5 times as high as The King’s? However, of special interest to me is the comparison of tuition costs between domestic and international students. Some post-secondary Christian institutions charge almost twice as much annual tuition to their international students, whereas others charge the same amount.

There may be good reasons for charging foreign students more tuition than domestic students, such as administrative costs (including visa and immigration matters), extra help with language issues, etc. Perhaps, Trinity Western University’s equally high tuition for both domestic and foreign students enables it to absorb the higher costs of educating foreign students.

Whatever the differences in costs, foreign students are clearly sought out by most secular and Christian Canadian institutions for the financial benefits they reap from such students.

A new metric

Many foreign students are only able to come to Canada because of the support of their wealthy families. In other cases, whole villages scrimp and save to send one of their favoured sons or daughters to become “successful” and bring honour to the village. Many foreign students do not return to their home countries if they manage to get permanent resident status in Canada.

It behooves institutions of higher learning to closely examine their motives for recruiting foreign students. True Christian charity would see poor, but deserving, foreign students pay less tuition than their richer Canadian counterparts. Better yet, all tuition should reflect students’ ability to pay. Although it may be difficult to determine this metric, it would level the fiscal post-secondary educational playing field rather than favouring the rich, whether domestic or foreign.