What you can do to help instigate change
Maximus Wenzel (he/him) // Contributor
Mesh Devkota // Illustrator
Last February, University of British Columbia (UBC) student Tim Chen made headlines after sharing his commute to his university online. How could a commute to school make headlines? Well, Chen flew to his Vancouver-based university from Calgary every Tuesday and Thursday, booking round trip flights from YYC to YVR for 150$ twice a week, or $1,200 a month. While this commute may be more expensive than the average student, this was a great fiscal decision for Chen, with his only alternative being to find a one-bedroom apartment in Vancouver. The average price of a one-bedroom apartment in 2024 was about $2,500, over double what Chen paid for plane tickets. Chen’s story highlighted a growing issue in Vancouver housing discourse and inspired discussions on the future of Canadian education as a whole: How are students expected to afford education?
Before we answer the how, it helps to understand the why. While Canadian education is significantly more affordable than American education, students around the country are struggling to afford to live on their own. Yet, Canadian universities face their own challenges that have only exacerbated this issue.
The International Students Cap:
Recently, Canada passed a cap on international student permit applications limiting the number of new permits to match the number of permits expiring to maintain a zero net-growth model. It enforces a 10% decrease in the number of study permits provided since 2024, or 43,000 international students to “ease the strain of housing, health care and other services,” according to an IRCC notice posted on January 24. While this limits the number of students looking for homes in densely packed cities and ideally stabilizes rent, this means losing millions of dollars in international tuition fees for universities across the nation.
Currently, many universities are opting to increase student tuition for both domestic and international students. That means even if your rent may not be rising as rapidly, your tuition will be, too. The Canadian government’s insufficient funding does not cover the higher operating costs that Canadian universities have been compensating with International tuition fees to stay afloat and allows each province to set limits for domestic tuition increase, which for domestic students is often 2%—at par with inflation, and higher for out-of-province and international students. While the province of British Columbia increased its spending on postsecondary education by 23% for the 24/25 school year, it wasn’t enough to prevent schools like UVic from cutting their budget by 13million.
The “Country Clubification” of University Life
Without sufficient funding from the government to support public post-secondary institutions so they aren’t incentivized to raise tuition costs or have less program options, getting a degree in Canada may not be achievable for the country’s lower to middle class. Since Gen X went to University, schools went from being an affordable risk after high school to debt magnets. During the ’70s, federal aid failed to keep up with inflation as it had in the ’60s, and universities instead looked to students to foot their bills. To do this, they had to make their universities appeal to as many students as possible. While American universities have plenty of examples of this, like the lazy rivers at Louisiana State, Canadian universities aren’t above placating a “country-club-style college” to students. Universities across North America are industrializing academia. In attempts to increase student engagement, they are investing huge sums in providing recreational amenities close to campus, driving up tuition costs and increasing access to higher education based on socioeconomic status. Certain amenities have become so normalized that GenZ’s parents’ best universities would look drab in comparison. Now more than ever, universities are desperate to reach tuition quotas or risk major consequences like that of St. Lawrence College in Ontario, which cut 40% of its courses this year due to a lower international enrolment.
According to several responses from post-secondary institutions to a mandate letter from the government of BC in 2023, the solution is to update their funding formula to address higher operating costs so that post-secondary institutions are not forced to rely on international enrollment. This ranges from spreading awareness through social media to organizing events for your course/program to communicate its importance to the university. But, to minimize current economic hardship there are grants and scholarships that are run by people who empathize with students. Until there’s no sufficient funding, provincial governments may continue to leave tuition increases unregulated.
Canadian post-secondary institutions have been operating in an unsustainable way for decades, and growth has been tied to international enrollment and their unregulated tuition fees. Programs closing down, layoffs and tuition increases are immediate consequences of the cap on international student permit applications, but this cap came as a result of an unsustainable system that called for a drastic measure. Degrowth is a painful process, and there are no simple solutions for structural problems. Decision makers from all levels of government, post-secondary institutions and students will have to question what role they can play in rebuilding this system in a sustainable way.