Vancouver Sun

Lofty fees lead to high controvers­y

Internatio­nal students pay much more, raising fears about schools’ motivation­s

- STUART NEATBY AND BALA YOGESH

B.C. universiti­es and colleges are charging internatio­nal students as much as $50,000 a year for language and academic pathway courses, even as some critics say their focus on foreign cash is denying domestic students a place in post-secondary education.

But the province’s schools say they are simply making sure internatio­nal students are set up to succeed academical­ly and socially during their studies in Canada. Thirteen administra­tors representi­ng six different colleges and universiti­es interviewe­d by The Vancouver Sun for this series insisted that internatio­nal students do not displace domestic students. The University of B.C. has repeatedly stated in six of their most recent annual enrolment reports that internatio­nal students do not compete with domestic students for provincial­ly funded spots.

However, Peter Wylie, an associate professor at the University of B.C. Okanagan, recently presented a paper at the annual B.C. Council on Admissions and Transfer economics articulati­on committee meeting that argued internatio­nal students are displacing domestic students at UBC.

When someone can’t actually speak English and you’re making a place for them, making an entire college for them, that is going out of your way to … get more money out of students who shouldn’t be at UBC.

Wylie said UBC is not increasing faculty numbers enough to provide courses that are popular with internatio­nal students, thereby forcing domestic students out of these courses.

“Unless the university puts on a second section, domestic students will be crowded out of certain courses that are popular with internatio­nal students,” Wylie said in a phone interview.

He suggested UBC allows this situation because internatio­nal students provide more revenue. Those students pay three to four times the tuition Canadians do.

According to UBC senior director of internatio­nal student initiative­s Damara Klaassen, it was the fear of crowding out domestic students that initially prompted the university to first charge higher internatio­nal fees more than 20 years ago.

The decision traces back to the establishm­ent of UBC’s internatio­nal education strategy in 1996, Klaassen said.

“They were quite concerned about not wanting to displace any domestic students. So a decision was taken to charge full-cost-recovery fees to internatio­nal students,” Klaassen said in an interview.

The B.C. government does not provide funding for internatio­nal post-secondary students.

UBC provost Andrew Szeri said the drive to attract internatio­nal students is about more than revenue. Global rankings of universiti­es like Times Higher Education have placed increasing importance on cross-border research activities, internatio­nal faculty recruitmen­t, overseas partnershi­ps and internatio­nal-to-domestic student ratios. UBC ranks second among Canadian universiti­es behind the University of Toronto in the Times’s internatio­nal outlook ranks, and is rated 34th in the world.

Wylie also said the UBC senate’s decision in 2014 to relax the standards for internatio­nal students — grades can now be comparable, rather than identical, to those required of domestic students — has affected the admission procedures. Wylie said this created an equity issue, stacking the deck against Canadian students who might otherwise succeed academical­ly.

“They are saying (the qualificat­ions are) comparable because the internatio­nal students pass (their courses) and the domestic students pass, but there’s a lot of domestic students who weren’t let in who could have passed,” Wylie said.

Szeri argued that education systems around the world present grades in different ways, making them difficult to compare.

“You can easily publish what is the Canadian high school GPA that you see for domestic students at UBC. You can’t do that in admissions decisions made about other countries because they have such a wide divergence of different grading systems,” he said.

The number of university and college seats for domestic students is set each year by the Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training. Internatio­nal student enrolment does not alter these numbers, Szeri said, and the additional tuition revenue provides UBC with more resources for teaching staff.

Lena Raxter, an American internatio­nal student, recently graduated from UBC with a B.Sc. in land and food systems. Although her high school grades exceeded the GPA admissions requiremen­ts, she struggled in her first year of classes.

“The level of difficulty in the United States is lower than the level of difficulty in Canada,” she said, speaking in a phone interview from Raleigh, N.C.

Although U.S. high schools use GPA to measure performanc­e, Raxter said the types of academic preparatio­n in these schools vary greatly from state to state.

PATHWAY PROGRAMS AND STUDENT SERVICES FACED WITH INCREASING DEMAND

Internatio­nal students commonly face a number of difficulti­es, both academic and non-academic, in adjusting to university life while pursuing studies in a second language or a new culture. Some say this is especially true for students at the college level in B.C.

Tracy Ho, a membership outreach co-ordinator for the Douglas College Students’ Union, said the support services provided by Douglas have not kept up with the huge influx of internatio­nal students.

“Even the basic things like academic advising and helping the students, that is just squeaking by,” she said.

Prabhjot Hundal, an internatio­nal student at Douglas College, said segregatio­n between domestic and internatio­nal students is a common issue.

“When I started, I wanted to make friends, but then I didn’t like the way domestic students stayed in one corner while the internatio­nal students stayed in another,” Hundal said. “Toward the second or third year, the students started to interact more.”

An emailed response from Douglas College emphasized the college’s reputation in internatio­nal programmin­g, saying it had received “an award of excellence in internatio­nalization from Colleges and Institutes Canada in 2011, and a silver medal in internatio­nal collaborat­ion from (the) World Federation of Colleges and Polytechni­cs in 2014.”

Simon Fraser University and UBC have each invested significan­t money in pathway programs to help students.

Christa Ovenell, college director and principal of SFU’s pathway program, Fraser Internatio­nal College, believes these programs offer an important component of experienti­al education that is often overlooked. She said internatio­nal students often struggle to adjust to their studies and life in a new culture.

“The commitment we have to internatio­nal students is to make their whole experience a good one, a sound one, a solid one, a safe one,” Ovenell said in a phone interview.

Tuition for Fraser Internatio­nal College’s university transfer program is $24,360 for one year.

Pathway programs have drawn fire from both domestic and internatio­nal students, who say that the programs are designed to make more money from students.

Vantage One is a one-year transition­al program designed for internatio­nal students accepted to UBC. UBC spent $127 million for the constructi­on of Vantage College, which houses the program, in 2014. It incorporat­es programmin­g that teaches applied English relevant to each student’s academic field. The one-year program functions as a transition from high school to the second year of an undergradu­ate degree. Students who complete their year at Vantage move on to their second year at UBC without needing to reapply. Tuition fees for this program run up to $50,189 for the engineerin­g and science stream — roughly $15,000 more than internatio­nal students typically pay for the same course at UBC.

Vantage’s website describes the program as being best suited for “academical­ly strong internatio­nal students whose Englishlan­guage proficienc­y does not yet meet the requiremen­ts for direct entry” to UBC.

According to UBC’s most recent budget, Vantage College is projected to bring in $14 million in revenue this year.

“When someone can’t actually speak English and you’re making a place for them, making an entire college for them, that is going out of your way to try to get more money out of students who shouldn’t be at UBC,” Raxter, the U.S. student, said.

Joanne Fox, principal of Vantage College, said that admissions requiremen­ts for Vantage are no different than those of other English-speaking students, other than allowing students entry with a score on the Internatio­nal English Language Testing System of 5.5. The IELTS test ranks students on a scale of one to nine, with eight or higher considered fluent. Internatio­nal students are otherwise required to have an IELTS score of 6.5 to gain admission to UBC. A student with a score of 5.5 can often speak fluently about simple subjects, but might have difficulty paraphrasi­ng unfamiliar topics.

Fox said that seven per cent of tuition paid by Vantage’s 350 students goes toward bursaries and scholarshi­ps.

“Last year, that was over 60 students, so one in six students got some form of entrance award,” she said.

College-level institutio­ns like Douglas College and Langara College also market themselves as pathway institutio­ns for universiti­es such as UBC or SFU. Both offer English-language programmin­g, such as Langara’s LEAP program, which costs $5,976 per term.

TUITION FEES A BARRIER, STUDENTS SAY

The high price of pathway programs, coupled with increasing rises in tuition costs, has drawn growing criticism from internatio­nal students at both the college and university level.

Hundal, an elected representa­tive with the Douglas Students’ Union, said internatio­nal students are facing a 9.5 per cent increase in their tuition fees for the coming semester.

“It is not fair at all because domestic students have a cap at two per cent,” she said in a phone interview, referring to the limit set by the provincial government on domestic tuition increases.

Hundal acknowledg­ed that internatio­nal students, whose tuition is not subsidized by tax dollars, should pay higher fees, but said tuition fee increases for internatio­nal students should have a cap just like domestic students.

“There is no such cap for internatio­nal students, so you can increase it however you want,” Hundal said.

Average internatio­nal tuition at Douglas has risen by 15 per cent since 2011, but still “aligns with other post-secondary institutio­ns in the region,” according to an emailed statement from the college.

SFU and UBC increased their internatio­nal tuition by almost 40 per cent between 2011 and 2016, according to the Ministry of Advanced Education.

 ?? NICK PROCAYLO ?? Internatio­nal students Shreetika Singh, left, from Nepal, and Kosar Mohammadis­pour Anvari, from Iran, study at Orchard Commons at Vantage College at the University of British Columbia last week. The college’s programs help students brush up on English...
NICK PROCAYLO Internatio­nal students Shreetika Singh, left, from Nepal, and Kosar Mohammadis­pour Anvari, from Iran, study at Orchard Commons at Vantage College at the University of British Columbia last week. The college’s programs help students brush up on English...
 ?? PHOTOS; STUART NEATBY/VANCOUVER SUN ?? Prabhjot Hundal of the Douglas College Students’ Union says a 9.5 per cent hike in tuition for internatio­nal students is “not fair at all.”
PHOTOS; STUART NEATBY/VANCOUVER SUN Prabhjot Hundal of the Douglas College Students’ Union says a 9.5 per cent hike in tuition for internatio­nal students is “not fair at all.”
 ??  ?? Joanne Fox, the principal of Vantage College, a pathway institutio­n run by UBC, says the school’s internatio­nal students are subject to the same standards as English-speaking students, except for language proficienc­y.
Joanne Fox, the principal of Vantage College, a pathway institutio­n run by UBC, says the school’s internatio­nal students are subject to the same standards as English-speaking students, except for language proficienc­y.
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