Whopping tuition hikes and over-the-top language requirements for out-of-province students are decimating enrolments
Let’s not mince words: Quebec Premier François Legault wants to kill Montreal’s English universities. On Thursday the Quebec government announced that it will hike tuition for mostly English-speaking out-of-province students by 33 per cent and require that 80 per cent of students at McGill and Concordia become proficient in French at a “Level 5”, or the schools will lose funding. For most non-Francophone students, that will require the equivalent of another semester of study — a sure-fire reason not to apply.
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Applications have already dropped by 20 per cent overall at McGill and by 33 per cent for international students at Concordia since the government floated the idea of doubling tuition in October. At the time, Legault said, “The number of English-speaking students threatens the survival of French.” Not exactly the best way to lay out the welcome mat.
Yet the government has no studies showing how these highly localized Montreal students are eroding French in Quebec. Freshmen at the two schools mostly live in residence while the remainder of the student body populate the 30-odd square blocks of the McGill ghetto and de Maisonneuve corridor between Atwater and Guy streets, where they also contribute to the Montreal economy to the tune of $427 million annually, including $82 million from out-of-province Canadian students alone, according to Fabrice Labeau, deputy provost of McGill.
And they contribute to the world. Take McGill, dubbed the “Harvard of the North.” It has produced 12 Nobel laureates, 147 Rhodes Scholars, nine Academy Award winners, 13 Grammy Award winners, four Pulitzer Prize winners, and 121 Olympians with over 35 Olympic medals. Its medical researchers have contributed to vaccines and therapies for hepatitis, HIV, cancer, heart disease and more. Currently, the university is spearheading the revitalization of the Royal Victoria Hospital, the “New Vic,” to create a medical excellence centre “dissolving boundaries between disciplines, communities and institutions, to focus on shared goals benefiting all of humanity.”
That’s the kind of global leadership government should encourage, not crush. Legault should think about that, next time he listens to a Leonard Cohen song or one of his kids needs medical treatment. Or the next time he takes in a hockey game — a sport that was developed at McGill in 1875.
And that sport may not be played there anymore. According to Labeau, one-third of the players on the school’s elite sports teams hail from other provinces. Those teams may now not be able to compete. And since McGill will have to attract more international students to make up the difference in enrolment, it will cannibalize other universities in the province to do so — including French schools like Université de Montreal. All of them will lose out.
So why is the premier so hell-bent on destroying institutions that have given so much to the province and the world? For one thing, his former party, the separatist Parti Québécois, is eating his lunch at the polls. A Léger survey conducted for Québecor media shows the PQ at 31 per cent support, compared with 25 per cent for the CAQ. Legault wants to re-establish his bona fides with nationalist francophone voters, and figures putting the boot to Anglophones is one way to do it.
But it might also be personal. In 2018, Legault gave an interview to the Montreal Gazette, entitled “From milkman to Quebec premier”, in which he described growing up in the working-class French enclave of Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, surrounded by wealthier English neighbourhoods. “In Ste-Anne, we were like a small place, speaking French, playing against Baie-D’Urfé and Beaconsfield in hockey in the winter and baseball in the summer,” Legault recalled. “It was like the French against the English.”
The article goes on to note that “The Legault home on Ste-Élisabeth Street was nestled among a grid of narrow streets in Ste-Anne, only blocks from the sprawling campuses of John Abbott College and McGill University’s Macdonald College, iconic symbols of English Quebec’s institutional stature.”
Did the little Legault stare at those symbols of “Anglo domination,” McGill among them, and vow to tear them down one day? We don’t know. But his government’s announcement feels just like something a five-year-old would do, kicking a stack of blocks without thinking where they’ll fall. Or who will fall with them.
National Post
Tasha Kheiriddin is Postmedia’s national politics columnist.
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Tasha Kheiriddin: Legault wants to kill Quebec's English universities. He must be stopped
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16.12.2023
Whopping tuition hikes and over-the-top language requirements for out-of-province students are decimating enrolments
Let’s not mince words: Quebec Premier François Legault wants to kill Montreal’s English universities. On Thursday the Quebec government announced that it will hike tuition for mostly English-speaking out-of-province students by 33 per cent and require that 80 per cent of students at McGill and Concordia become proficient in French at a “Level 5”, or the schools will lose funding. For most non-Francophone students, that will require the equivalent of another semester of study — a sure-fire reason not to apply.
Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.
Enjoy the latest local, national and international news.
Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience.
Don't have an account? Create Account
Applications have already dropped by 20 per cent overall at McGill and by 33 per cent for international students at Concordia since the government floated the idea of doubling tuition in October. At the time, Legault said, “The number of English-speaking students threatens the survival of French.” Not exactly the best way to lay out the welcome mat.
Yet the government has no studies showing how these highly localized Montreal students are eroding French in Quebec. Freshmen at the two schools mostly live in residence while the remainder of the student........
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