Quebec's tuition fee hike: which international students will be exempt?

In a stated bid to preserve French and reduce the gap between chronically underfunded English and French universities, the Quebec government is hiking the out-of-province Canadian tuition fee — a financial barrier that some international students can bypass.

Starting in the fall of 2024, Canadian university students, including those from francophone minorities in Ontario and New Brunswick, will have to pay $12,000 per year — $3,000 more than French and Belgian francophone students studying in Quebec.

But France and Belgium aren't the only countries whose students have been granted tuition exemptions.

The provincial government has student mobility agreements with 39 countries, sparing higher education students from paying roughly $20,000 in international tuition fees.

Quebec caps the number of exemptions granted to students enrolled in English-speaking institutions at 20 per cent of the total number of tuition fee exemptions in the province.

While there is no restriction on the number of French and Belgian francophone students, other countries with agreements have a limited number of students who can enjoy a tuition exemption. Those countries set their own criteria for parcelling out the province's tuition exemptions to students.

Mohamed El Mahdi Gaouane, the deputy head of the mission of the Kingdom of Morocco, said in a statement his country wishes to "to increase and expand, as much as possible" the number of students who can benefit from its agreement with Quebec.

The province's reciprocity agreement with Morocco dates back to 1980. At its height, the deal helped as many as 150 Moroccan university students, including 25 undergraduates, pursue their education — in French — at the provincial rate, Gaouane said.

The number of Moroccan students eligible to pay local fees has since tapered off to 90 a year, including 45 undergraduates, making Morocco the second-highest beneficiary of tuition exemptions in the province.

Countries next in line with the greatest number of students exempted are Algeria (83), Tunisia (65), Senegal (52) and Mexico (50). 

Although Morocco is a French-speaking North African country, the student mobility agreement with Quebec isn't strictly about promoting the French language, Gaouane said.

Morocco chooses recipients of tuition fee exemptions based on 11 priority sectors for the country's socio-economic development, Gaouane said, namely STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields.

"Above all, the human connections that this mobility agreement creates is what is truly enriching," he said. "Moroccan students may benefit from a North American, and therefore, an international experience."

"We also hope that this can be the case for Quebec students who are also, of course, welcome to attend Moroccan universities," he added.