Visa Student Tuition and UBC's Fiscal Plan
a comment from colleague Mark Mac Lean
UBC, like many Canadian universities and colleges, have found itself caught in by being too reliant on extracting wealth from the global middle classes. Many ancillary services created in the university over the past decade and a half have been fuelled by International student fees. These fees have skyrocketed well beyond the levels paid by domestic students. As long as universities could count on infinite growth of the international student market they were happy. They paid little heed to concerns or worries about becoming so reliant on visa students to pay the water bills so to speak.
One past UBC president’s celebrated ‘net new 100’ faculty hires campaign was premised upon money from international students ignoring the fiscal fragility of the idea.
Today UBC, especially UBC-O, is facing a serious fiscal challenge caused by top leadership’s blinkered views on drawing revenue from international student tuition fees. During my term on the board 2017-2020 the administration refused to consider ways to temper our problematic reliance on this source of funding. During my current term 2023-2026 the administration says yes it’s bad for the sector but we’re doing okay.
But we are not doing okay. I hear it from the grassroots: Heads expecting us to teach larger class sizes, reduced course offerings, and less money for sessional instructors. Staff positions are being left empty that might ordinarily have been posted and filled.
Mark Mac Lean has written a detailed blogpost on the issue as it relates to UBC. I share his opening here and direct you to his blog to read the full story.
[Disclosure: Mark is also running for a position on the board of governors. I have known him for many years, served with him on the faculty association executive together, and generally admire him, his work, and his service. We are running separate and autonomous campaigns for a seat on the board of governors.]
UBC in Transition: Impact of ISI Enrolment Volatility.
UBC is in a challenging financial situation that seems likely to transform the university substantially in spite of our relatively strong financial position going into the present period of uncertainty.
Although this uncertainty is shaped by broader global instability, many of the pressures on the core academic mission of UBC are acutely familiar. UBC is grappling with increasingly unpredictable international student demand, persistently tight limits on provincial funding for universities, limited external funding for capital projects, tightening national research budgets, and rising costs for both essential digital infrastructure and library resources. These financial pressures do not exist in isolation.
These constraints are also emerging at a time when broader cultural devaluing of academic expertise and reason is reshaping the environment in which we teach, conduct research, and govern our institution.
The full story is posted on Mark’s blog: Some Random Thoughts of a Mathematician