It’s a tough question: when is the right time to rethink and reset international tuition?
Well, this might be it.
There’s two major reasons why:
1) Make hay while the sun shines.
Canada has never been as highly regarded by international students as it is today.
There’s a slew of factors in play as to why that is.
In part, it is a reaction to Australia’s sealed border and its death-grip on international students’ tuition fees.
The US has not yet recovered from its previous administration — and the ongoing hostility towards outsiders means it may take a lot of time before the current president can turn his attention to international students. And while Great Britain has shown a warm welcome to international students, it hasn’t exactly extended that warmth when it comes to international migrants.
So in this context, Canada’s open-door policy encouraging good students to come here and use their studies as a foundation for citizenship certainly stands head and shoulders over what would be the competition.
A major comprehensive university estimates that between 2/3 and ¾ of its international students go on to apply for citizenship once they graduate.
In short, with this influx of students, now is the time to make sure your international tuition fees are in the best possible place.
2) The window of opportunity is closing.
With so many international students wanting to study here, you can lose money in each individual transaction yet somehow assume that you’re making money on the volume.
After all - why do an in-depth study to set tuition fees when you can just look left, look right and put yourself in between your comparators? Part of the justification is that domestic enrolments are still trending down, so there are plenty of empty seats to be filled. But the reverse is beginning to happen — domestic university-aged populations are beginning to rise in all parts of the country except Atlantic Canada. The number of students is projected to rise beginning in 2023 and peak at 17% higher in 2028.
More potential domestic students mean a growing demand for domestic enrolments in popular programs. In the past, expanding universities to meet the demand might have been a strategy — but with governments saddled with pandemic debt, that may not be an option. The fact that universities count on international fees to provide a very large part of their tuition revenues won’t matter to the parents of domestic students. They pay the taxes and they want their children to get a university education.
Moving to market rates for international students before the revenue squeeze does two things: it sends a message that your programs are high-quality (because for many international families, cost is synonymous with quality) and it sets your school up to continue to reasonably raise fees as demand from domestic students slowly decreases the available space. Rather than turning your fee schedule upside down, you can understand where you can go and move in that direction in a way that doesn’t alienate suddenly.
And the results speak for themselves:
