Canadian Universities: the Quebec edition

This is Joseph.

Quebec is planning to double tuition for interprovincial students attending English universities, starting with the entering cohort in 2024. They are also seizing part of the proceeds from international students:

Quebec also announced changes to the system for international students. As of the fall of 2024, Quebec will take the first $20,000 in tuition that universities charge international students. In the past, universities could keep the entirety of international tuition.

It also seems like they will be taking a cut of the increase in interprovincial fees:

 And make no mistake, this policy is intended to be — and will be — an absolute disaster for the anglo universities. The province made no effort to consult them, and by all accounts they were totally blindsided by the announcement. The concession by the province to grandfathering tuition for those students already enrolled is minor compared to the effect, which will be to significantly decrease enrolments. The fact that the province is going to take a slice out of this higher tuition money, and use it to fund the province’s French-language universities, is just the extra kick in the nuts.

Although I have been having trouble confirming this. But the fee hike is huge:

Tuition for Canadians outside Quebec will jump to $17,000 from $8,992, Higher Education Minister Pascale Déry announced Friday. She said the government will charge universities $20,000 for each international student they recruit and direct that money only to francophone universities

This will shrink the number of out of province students and, given international students already pay $20-28K tuition, shatter university revenue.  So why is this happening. One possibility is that the government in Quebec sees what is happening elsewhere: 

And is trying to get in front of the disaster before it strikes. After all, I rather doubt Cape Breton Island has build a few thousand apartments nearby.  It's also becoming clear that the international student boom is aggravating a housing crisis brought on by poor policy at the municipal and provincial level across Canada. Just look at this chart (via Mike Moffat, cited in the last sentence:

But Canada is struggling to build housing. The final post is the key "In short: Canada cannot simultaneously be a high-growth and a low-growth country". I agree and think we should be a high growth country. 

Now you can quibble with the full impact of a massive increase in housing (infrastructure, new investment in scare health care resources, the need for more tradespeople -- it's a big list) but the key point is that the housing bubble, and its impact on ordinary Canadians, is underneath it all. Some of it is NIBMY-ism but there is also just a shortage of housing (even rents are exploding) that is not at all being addressed.

So is this move by Quebec good policy? No. Because it shifts the pain entirely to the Anglophone universities while subsidizing the Francophone ones. It will strengthen French in Quebec, fair enough, and it is true that there are a lot of English speaking students in Canada who are about to learn just how incentivized Ontario universities are to not admit them. But it still fails to grapple with the underlying problems in a clear way. Instead, it sacrifices a lot of the drivers of the wonderful hybrid culture of Montreal and that is a shame.