McGill fined $2 million by Quebec government for hiking tuition

[iamanapp]

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MONTREAL - Montreal’s McGill University will be fined more than $2 million for having drastically raised the tuition fees for its MBA program without the permission of the Quebec government.
The provincial government announced Monday that the top-ranked university will see its public subsidy cut by roughly $2.1 million this year.
In a province with the lowest tuition rates in Canada and a decade-long freeze on fee hikes, McGill has been pushing back.
Last September, McGill began charging $29,500 in annual tuition for its two-year MBA program — nearly nine times higher than provincial limit that caps tuition at around $3,400 per year.
McGill has said in the past that it needs the extra cash to make its program competitive with others in Canada and the United States.
The Quebec government says McGill’s move broke provincial rules and lowered accessibility to the program.
“This downward adjustment will be applied until the situation returns to normal,” Education Minister Line Beauchamp said in a statement.
“I still have a hard time, however, accepting that reducing this subsidy will have an effect on the quality of services offered to students.”
University officials declined to comment, saying they would respond on Tuesday.
McGill plans to increase the business administration master’s rate by another $3,000 next year. In order to charge the higher rates, McGill has given up the public funding it receives for the MBA program.
The move follows a similar one by Queen’s University, which privatized its MBA program in the 1990s, allowing it to set tuition rates higher than provincial limits.
Several other MBA programs, including those at the universities of Toronto and Western Ontario, have since followed suit.
[McGill</a> fined $2 million by Quebec government for hiking MBA tuition 900 per cent - Yahoo! News](<a href=“http://ca.news.yahoo.com/mcgill-fined-2-million-quebec-government-hiking-mba-20110314-115348-666.html#mwpphu-container]McGill”>http://ca.news.yahoo.com/mcgill-fined-2-million-quebec-government-hiking-mba-20110314-115348-666.html#mwpphu-container)

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<p>So who’s right here, the provincial government or the university?</p>

[tomofboston]

<p>The university is right.</p>

<p>The government of Quebec has underfunded its universities for years compared to universities in other Canadian provinces. Part of the reason is that students/faculty at the French universities don’t have much choice. If they want to study/work in French, they pretty much have no other choice. Students/faculty who want to study/work in English have choices all across Canada and are not limited to Quebec’s three English universities. In short, French Quebecers are a captive audience.</p>

<p>The Quebec government also enforces the same tuition and subsidy to all universities regardless of whether they are research universities of primarily teaching institutions.</p>

<p>McGill privatized its MBA and was not requesting a subsidy from the government. Private is a dirty word to the Quebec government. Everything has to be under the control of the government which micromanages every detail. Market forces are irrelevant. Somehow McGill is supposed to run an MBA program wth $14,000/year tuition plus grant when University of Toronto has $35,000/year to spend on its students. Other Quebec universities were hoping to follow suit but that will not be likely now.</p>

<p>The government says it is trying to maintain access but it is increasingly an access to mediocrity.</p>

[tomofboston]

<p>This is McGill’s official response:</p>

<p>

McGill disappointed by government’s response on MBA
Mar. 15, 2011
Program has made remarkable progress since self-funding model adopted</p>

<p>McGill University is perplexed and disappointed with the response of the Government of Quebec to the changes made by McGill to transform the University’s MBA program.</p>

<p>Rather than celebrate the dramatic progress and success McGill has achieved in a short period of time with its renewed and self-funded MBA, the government has imposed a significant fine against one of its own universities.</p>

<p>This action puts an arbitrary, elective and unprecedented exercise of authority of government as a priority over demonstrated quality and program performance.</p>

<p>Since McGill moved to a self-funded program, it has developed an MBA that is attracting top-calibre students from Quebec (some of whom would have otherwise gone outside the province for their MBA), and from elsewhere.</p>

<p>The McGill MBA’s improvements include: leaping from 95th to 57th in the prestigious Financial Times rankings; maintaining stable enrolment rates; having McGill graduates enjoy the highest job placement rates and highest starting salaries in Canada; being ranked by FT as the only Quebec MBA program in the Top 100 in the world.</p>

<p>To sustain the University’s increased investments in its program, McGill moved last fall to a self-funded tuition model under which it does without any government subsidies for its MBA students, thus saving Quebec taxpayers about $1.2 million annually.</p>

<p>McGill has created, at the same time, student aid at a unique level of support for any Quebec university program, on a per-student basis. The McGill MBA program provides an average of $12,000 per student in financial aid.</p>

<p>Quebecers deserve better than to have a top quality program fined. Quebecers deserve a world-class MBA program and McGill is providing it. McGill has demonstrated that it can do so without limiting accessibility, and without doing so on the backs of our undergraduate students.</p>

<p>McGill’s rejuvenated program, now with better facilities, improved student-teacher ratios, top-level professors, improved advising and novel educational elements, costs significantly less than top MBA programs elsewhere in Canada, and the world.</p>

<p>McGill will continue to meet the interests of our students, and of Quebec.

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