Denis Cossette is Chief Financial Officer at Concordia, with more than 20 years experience working in the higher education sector.
Cossette’s past roles have included being University of Ottawa’s associate VP of Financial Resources and Director of Financial Services, as well as Director of Financial Resources and VP of Administration and Finance for La Cité college.
What caused you to initially re-evaluate your approach to international tuition fees?
For a long time, contrary to many provinces, most of the fees in Quebec were regulated - meaning there was no decision taken by the board, there were only prescribed rates by the government. But in 2018, the provincial government decided to deregulate all fees for undergrad programs and grad programs with no thesis.
With that new framework from the province in place, we decided to revisit our approach to international fees, devising a five-year plan supported by board decisions as well as broader directions and trends surrounding the subject.
We discussed possible paths amongst ourselves and we concluded that having benchmark analyses and external data-driven recommendations could help the institution present a strong business case for optimizing tuition fees - especially to the students themselves. So this was the basic rationale for seeking out external expertise, assessing the trends and data that could influence the decision-making process for the better.
And did you encounter any surprises along the way?
I wouldn’t call it surprises but when you read about and discuss tuition fees, you really realize that price has a direct influence on the reputation and image of an institution. Normally, we might think that if we increase the fees, it would reduce the demand. It’s common to think that doing so could therefore be dangerous thus we should stay at lower rates to keep students coming.
The interesting thing is: the data and feedback provided by CRI proved that in reality, it's quite the opposite. In the international market, fees are an indicator of the quality of education and for many, a cheap price equals a cheap education. So we had to contend with that evidence and work with what the data was telling us.
The other thing we learned was about the great capacity for institutions to adjust pricing. It turns out that we had a lot of room for tuition flexibility when compared to other universities, both Canadian or from countries like the US, UK and Australia. We realized fees at our institution were relatively modest compared to many other institutions. And that wasn’t helping us.
So, we had room to adjust prices, as well as an opportunity to redefine our strategy for who, when, where and how we want to recruit internationally.
“having strong data and access to real-world information is becoming important for management and recruitment and strategy regarding international students. It's more complex than it was before.”
The research is only half the battle. Can you speak a bit about the process of getting these fees adopted? Did you have pushback?
Oh yes - for students, any increase is too much. So we had to discuss it closely with the students we have on our boards. So we were expecting some pushback from that group. And then we have to respect that. So we illustrated that education is not cheap, and how we worked additional financial aid in with the optimized tuition fees. We also considered the attraction of Montreal again, how it’s been recently released that Canada is the number one most attractive city in the world for international students. So we use that conclusion as well in the discussion process. The allure of Montreal combines quality education, cheap cost of living, security, diversity, and inclusion. So it's another interesting element that bolsters our proposal.
But for the whole board, this was something new. As I mentioned, before the deregulation, most tuition fees never had to be approved by the board. So we needed to have an education about tuition fees in general. What do we approve? Was the proposed framework relevant in comparison to other institutions of similar profile?
It was a long discussion that we needed to have internally and with the board, mainly the finance committee of the board, so we needed to work with them.
Another thing was that we decided to extend the discussion, not only on the financial side. We considered the academic side and the added value of having international students on our campus, to enrich the student experience, and keep a balance between the international student population and the number of students in specific programs.
Along those lines, another point of value from CRI’s research was the predictability that allowed us to create a long-term framework to the board, a five-year forecast to determine the fees and the range of the increase over that time.
With a framework like this, you don't need to go back to the board each year to restart a discussion. You can just express in future reports the evolution of the international student population and see if it is in accordance with forecast and expectation. If not, we can adjust it without starting from scratch.
So you mentioned that there's this perception that raising fees may scare students off. Is there anything else that you think discourages institutions from not taking a look at their international tuition?
There is probably a sense of “What we’ve been doing has been working. We receive a fair share of international students, so why bother? After all, our price is in the ballpark of similar institutions. Why invest resources there?”
That sort of complacency is probably a main factor. The other side of it is that things have changed a lot regarding international students in the past five years. You have to understand that from 2000 to about 2017, there was somewhat of a large opportunistic window in terms of increasing international students. It was a way to counterbalance the fact that provincial governments were decreasing funding contributions to universities. So it was great for 10, 15 years. Now, there are probably two factors that influence the fact that we cannot count on the past to evaluate for the future.
The first one concerns the quantity of international students and the optimal balance of international students on your campus. You need to be prudent about impacting student life by having too many students from one country in one program - because even if you are in a foreign country, you try to meet and talk and study with the students from your own country. So, this is one aspect that you need to be aware of and how you analyze that or predict what would be the future of specific programs.
The second factor is risk management when it comes to foreign conditions. In the past, universities were not considering the fact that international students could be experiencing economic, political, social or public health issues in their own country and they could be influenced by these factors.
We can’t just offer international students to come to our institution blindly. We need to consider different aspects including the fiscal and economic capacity, for example: some countries have experienced difficult financial or economic situations in the past, including large fluctuations of currencies, that would influence the price between the first day and the last day of the program.
Another example is of course about health issues - nobody was expecting to deal with the impact of covid, but now it’s a major factor. How do we support international students and manage our cohort in terms of online learning?
Also, we have to consider legal status - making sure that the diploma delivered by Canadian universities would be recognized as legitimate in their countries.
All of this to say that having strong data and access to real-world information is becoming important for management and recruitment and strategy regarding international students. It's more complex than it was before.
“It's a long-term strategy, it's not an overnight strategy. You need to think and build for the future and you need to recruit the right expertise to support that development.”
Finally, do you have any advice for schools that are looking to recruit more international students or stronger international students?
I think the first thing is: it's a long-term strategy, it's not an overnight strategy. You need to think and build for the future and you need to recruit the right expertise to support that development.
That second is the traditional approach of recruiting - having somebody to represent an institution in another country or having international fairs. Yes, it's still interesting but it's not the only way to recruit international students. For example, for the last two years, we have conducted our open doors activities not only on-site, but remotely - and it was a big success in terms of the levels of attendance from international students being able to access these open doors activities a lot more. They didn't need to come to Canada to participate.
Lastly, make sure that the board is comfortable and has a very close relationship between the finance dimension and the academic dimension. So between the CFO or VP of Finance and the provosts - everyone should align early on the strategy.