Zeba Munira joins the Zoom call interview at 4 a.m. in Qatar. The dim lighting in her bedroom contrasts her lively voice, yet a tone of anxiety filters in when the conversation moves toward university fees.
“I’m not sure how I’m gonna get through four years of this university,” she says with a quiver in her voice.
Originally from Bangladesh, 20-year-old Munira is in her second year of a bachelor’s degree in commerce at Carleton University. Her family lives in Doha where her dad runs a small business.
Munira says since she started studying at Carleton, relationships within her family have changed. Her father has become quieter since she began her studies, but he tries to hide his stress from her, she says.
“After I started studying at Carleton [my dad has] lost a lot of weight,” she says. “Paying international fees at Carleton has had an impact on my whole family.”
Her dad has started working harder, longer hours to try and earn enough money to cover educational expenses. But he has become so stressed Munira and her mom have begun to worry about his well-being.
The fees have taken a toll on Munira, too. She says as soon as she came to Canada in 2022 she started looking for a job to alleviate her family’s expenses. Munira’s tuition has already increased by more than $4,000 since her first year.
She’s not alone.
She is one of about 4,500 international students at Carleton University that see education expenses rise every year.
Rising costs beside frozen fees
With tuition fees ranging from $30,389 to $46,152, Carleton’s international students are regularly paying almost four times more than their Canadian and permanent resident peers.
Carleton’s 2021-22 budget report states Carleton counts on the revenue from international students to offset financial risks, such as meeting enrollment targets or investing in future initiatives.
“Strong growth in international recruitment in prior years provides the necessary level of student flow-through, coupled with increases in international tuition fees, to mitigate the financial risk in the short-term,” the report states.
Tuition increases for international students ranged between zero and eight per cent from the 2020-21 to 2021-22 academic years. The chair of the finance committee in a Board of Governor’s (BoG) report presented on Dec. 6 states that increases are projected to continue in this range in the future.
During the COVID-19 pandemic—when no fee reduction was granted to international students despite classes moving online—Carleton’s expenses decreased by $10.3 million. In this same period, Carleton’s final balance came to a surplus of $6.4 million, according to the report by the chair of the finance committee included in the Oct. 4 BoG meeting agenda.
While international fees increased and Carleton’s expenses decreased, domestic tuition remained still. A 10 per cent reduction in domestic tuition for the 2019-20 academic year led to a temporary freeze on domestic tuition initiated in 2020-21.
This difference in fee freezes and increases is consistent across Ontario. According to Statistics Canada, domestic undergraduate tuition in Ontario fluctuated within one hundred dollars between 2020-21 and 2022-23, and actually decreased overall. In this same time, Ontario’s international undergraduate tuition increased steadily by around $5,000.
Currently, the average undergraduate tuition in Ontario is $7,920 and the average international undergraduate tuition in Ontario is $45,242.
Post-secondary institutions tend to rely more heavily on international tuition fees and enrollment to reach a balanced budget. According to a report by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA), this has negative consequences on the quality of education domestic students receive, such as larger class sizes and less one-on-one guidance.
All of this, coupled with the provincial government’s consistent underfunding of post-secondary institutions, means students in Ontario receive less funding per capita than any in any other province, according to the OCUFA report.
Government funding received by Carleton decreased slightly from $175.9 million in 2020-21 to $175.5 million the following year, according to the Oct. 4 BoG meeting minutes. The chair of the finance committee’s report to the BoG states Carleton estimated the tuition freeze for domestic students, accompanied by the decrease in the number of full-time domestic students, accounted for an overall decreased revenue of $3.9 million.
As multiple sources of revenue decrease, Jonathan Ojangole, an international student from Uganda and undergraduate representative on the BoG, says increasing international student fees is a necessity for the university, not a choice.
“From a corporate standpoint, [Carleton administration doesn’t] really want to raise international student fees, they really feel that international student fees are high enough,” Ojangole says.
Ojangole contends that it’s other factors such as insufficient provincial funding and dropping revenue from domestic students that are forcing the school to have to raise fees. He adds he thinks Carleton’s administration is particularly good at listening to issues raised by students.
“As an institution, we are committed to offering support and resources for international students to help foster positive experiences at Carleton,” Reid wrote. “International students are encouraged to contact the [International Student Services Office (ISSO)] with any service-related questions or for additional support.”
The Charlatan reached out to the ISSO, but representatives declined to comment.
In his own experience, Ojangole says support from his family is what allows him to focus on his computer science degree during the academic year. But to pay rent and other expenses, he travels to the United States to work during the summer months.
A new Canadian dream
International education agencies market Carleton as a top-of-the-line educational experience, boasting strong international connections and beautiful surroundings. An advertising effort that often comes with a profit for these agencies.
However, many students who attend universities like Carleton for these reasons end up not being able to fully enjoy their university experience due to problems exclusive to international students, such as high tuition fees and limited loan options.
Their problems often begin with a conspicuous marketing effort pursued by Canadian institutions to attract international students. An example of this is the 2019 Colleges and Institutes Canada (CICan) report titled Emerging Markets for International Student Recruitment to Canadian Colleges and Institutes, which details the “target markets” for CICan to pursue international student recruitment in.
In addition to government-backed, targeted campaigns like this, third-party education agents also play a huge role in the movements of international students.
This begins in the application process.
Navyashree Krishnareddy is in her second year at Carleton pursuing a masters of technology innovation management. When she studied at the Bhusanayana Mukundadas Sreenivasaiah Institute of Technology in Bangalore, India during her undergraduate degree, she was contacted by an education agent from IDP Education Limited and encouraged to apply for a masters degree program in Australia or New Zealand.
IDP Education Limited is an Australian company that connects students in India to schools in other countries, including Canada. It is publicly traded on the Australian Stock Exchange. Over the past five years, IDP’s stock price grew more than 430 per cent from around $6.80 AUD to about $29.50 AUD.
The auditor general’s 2022 audit of Ontario universities points out a significant reliance on India as a source of international students for the University of Windsor, Ontario Tech University, Algoma University and Nipissing University. At the University of Windsor, about 60 per cent of all international students enrolled in 2021 are from India.
In Krishnareddy’s case, she says she began looking at North America as a place to study—instead of the places the agent suggested to her—because of COVID-19 restrictions. But while doing so, she says she dealt with underlying feelings of mistrust for the IDP agent she was working with.
“Apply for diplomas, apply for colleges, you won’t get into universities [in Canada]” she says the agent told her.
According to Krishnareddy, her agent tried to redirect her toward institutions with which IDP Education Limited had an affiliation with.
An IDP spokesperson told the Charlatan in an email their student counsellors are unbiased. When asked how much money IDP receives from its partner institutions, the spokesperson did not provide an exact figure.
“IDP works on an individual basis with education institutions through strategic partnerships,” the spokesperson said in an email.
Defying what she was told by her IDP agent, Krishnareddy decided to take matters into her own hands.
“I believed in myself and applied for university,” she says.
By applying independently, Krishnareddy only had to pay Carleton’s standard international admission fee and not the agent’s surplus fee that’s often independently determined.
Krishnareddy said she was never asked for money from IDP while applying to universities in Australia and New Zealand. However, she said she was told she would be charged by IDP if she wanted to apply to universities in the United States, or possibly Canada.
An IDP spokesperson told the Charlatan in an email that some students applying to educational institutions in the U.S. will be charged a fee less than $100 for couriering and visa processing. In Australia only, IDP also offers migration services which can be used at an additional cost.
According to a 2021 investigation by The Walrus, educational agents’ industry standard rate is 15 to 20 per cent of a student’s first year tuition. This could range from $1,500 to $5,000.
But to collect their fees, agents must gamble with young people’s dreams by promising vulnerable international students an easy path to permanent residency or even citizenship.
This initiative to undertake international student recruitment as a business can be traced back to the federal government. In 2012, it published a report titled International Education: A Key Driver of Canada’s Future Prosperity that outlined how tuition and expenses of international students add to Canada’s economy.
By 2018, international students’ spending supported 218,577 jobs in the Canadian economy and contributed a total of $22.3 billion to Canada’s GDP.
Elusive loans
International student tuition fees are largely unregulated across Canada.
This, plus the minimal benefits available to ease the cost of living, means Carleton’s international undergraduate students face academic and living expenses that can exceed $43,000 per year. Similarly, a graduate student’s expenses can add up to between $42,000 to $77,000.
To help ease these expenses, university students often turn to loans for support. However, many loans provided by Canadian universities are geared towards Canadian citizens and permanent residents, according to International Student Loan, a website that students can go to to compare loan options.
This means many international students rely on private loans to finance their studies, or else their options are extremely limited.
Additionally, no regulation has been imposed on international student loans. Unlike Canada Student Loans, which the federal government suspended the accumulation of interest on from April 2021 until March 2023.
Not only are loans hard to come by, but students with study permits also need to be able to pay off any loans they get if they want to maintain their study permit.
Without a permit, students like Munira and Krishnareddy cannot work or live in Canada.
Ultimately, any change in academic status or default on loan or tuition payments can result in international students losing their study permit or their chance of regaining it in the future.
Until recently, international students also faced a 20 hour off-campus work week limit. Even with a study permit, this limited the amount of money they could make to put towards costs such as loan payments.
In an effort to ease Canada’s labour shortage, the federal government recently announced this limit would be lifted until December 2023, or sooner if it decides to revoke the temporary policy.
If the limit is reinstated, some students could resort to working informally to survive—leading to uncertain and potentially dangerous situations.
‘Like pocket money’
Together, the issues being faced by international students add up to be severe and complex.
All things considered, high tuition fees continue to stand out as having the most severe financial and psychological consequences. Mitra Yakubi, chairperson at the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) Ontario, says it’s unfair how international students are treated in Canada.
“In a lot of ways, [international students] are treated as cash cows because institutions rely on them to make further revenue,” Yakubi says.
The CFS, founded in 1981, is the biggest student association in Canada. It’s composed of 530,000 students nationwide and 350,000 in Ontario alone. Currently, the CFS is running two campaigns, “Fairness for international students” and “Fight the fees,” to help improve the student experience of international students.
Meanwhile, the reality remains that international students unable to pay advance fees in cash have few options left other than dropping out.
For many students, scholarships and bursaries do little to alleviate the burden of tuition.
Ojangole says he was awarded an entrance scholarship of $2,000 based on his grades at the time of admission. But in the grand scheme of his total fee structure as an international student, he says “this is like pocket money.”
His scholarship accounts for slightly more than four per cent of his current yearly tuition, which totals $44,917.67. That 4 per cent equals about the cost of a week and a half worth of classes for a full-time international student registered for two terms.
When is enough, enough?
Sheikh Fahim, a computer science student entering his final year of studies at Carleton, left his family in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, to study in Ottawa.
He says he chose Carleton because Canada was a relatively cheap destination compared to the U.S. Now, he thinks it’s no longer worth it. In May 2021—in the midst of the pandemic—he applied for co-op through his program because he was tired of online school.
When Fahim returned to Carleton in the fall after 16 months away, he says he was met with a shocking surprise: a huge increase in his full-time tuition. For the fall 2022 term, he was facing mandatory tuition fees of $21,462.50—an increase of more than $3000 dollar since Winter 2021 when he paid $18,401. Both figures are after subtracting his $2000 per-semester entrance scholarship.
Over such a short period of time, he thought it was an “insane increase” with no improvement in the quality of education he was receiving to justify the price.
According to Fahim, this wall of fees he faced upon his return to school could be indicative of what’s to come for Canada’s population of international students.
“I feel like I’m one of the last few batches of international students that are gonna be able to think of Canada as an affordable destination.”
Featured image by Nicola Scodro.
