Fee hike concerns international students

By Hicham Safieddine and Barbara Black

While it is still uncertain whether international students in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences will see an increase in their tuition, Maya Chivi and Russell Lobo were disappointed to hear that the “privatized”fees in the John Molson School of Business have been approved by the Quebec government.

Chivi and Lobo are co-presidents of the Concordia International Students Association. The pair said they understand that the university needs revenue, but they object to a sudden, steep increase. “Ten per cent would be normal, but in the case of the JMSB, the increase is 52.6 per cent,” Lobo said. “Some people are packing their bags.”

Tuition for undergraduate studies at the John Molson School of Business jumped by more than $3,000 for this year, a $112-increase per credit. Higher fees were reinstated after it was discovered that McGill was not sanctioned for ignoring a Quebec government prohibition to privatize fees.

The Faculty of Arts and Science proposed last spring to charge international undergraduate students a differential fee of $67 per credit in addition to the differential fee mandated by the Quebec government. International students in Arts and Science currently pay $12,000 in government and university fees. The hike of around $2,000 annually could be implemented in January.

The proposal faced strong opposition by the Concordia Student Union and was not ratified by the Board of Governors on June 17 because of strong opposition from student members. The Board is expected to discuss the proposal when it reconvenes on Sept. 29.

Chivi said there’s a misperception that international students are all from wealthy families. She and her sister are in their fifth and final year at Concordia, but if the increase goes through, her parents may decide to bring her brother back to a university in Lebanon.

Nada Amin is a first-year international student in Political Science who came here from Egypt last month because tuition was more reasonable than in the United States.

“ My family were expecting to pay a little bit more over the years for my education, but if I knew it was going to be this much I might have gone somewhere closer to home.”

“ I feel like we are being punished for coming here.”

Faculty of Arts and Science Vice-Dean John Capobianco said most of the additional revenue generated by a tuition increase would be used to support the Faculty’s ongoing international initiatives, including scholarships of $150,000 annually and recruitment efforts abroad.

CSU VP academic Alison Beck said the student union urged the office of the dean last month to find alternative sources of funding.

“The government has a policy that disallows this privatization and an increase will be in contravention of this policy,” she said.

“This will create a situation in which international students are paying more than the national average. Concordia is becoming less and less accessible, and that is contrary to one of its founding principles.”