After taking a hit on international student enrolment as a result of its insolvency, as well as the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Laurentian University will not be hiking its international student tuition fees for the 2022-2023 year.
The university’s board of governors voted on the matter at their June 24 meeting.
Laurentian continues to undergo court-supervised restructuring after declaring insolvency and filing under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (or CCAA) in early 2021. The university hopes to file a plan of arrangement to pay out its creditors this summer.
“As a result of the CCAA process, along with domestic students, we have seen a reduction in international students, compounded by the COVID restrictions, which have made it difficult for international students to get their visas to come to Canada,” said Michel Piché, Laurentian’s vice-president, finance and administration.
“So all that to say that we want to focus on getting back our international students enrolment to the level that we've had before, and focusing more and in different countries. We will have a very specific marketing program to that end, in the coming year.”
He said international students are an important part of Laurentian’s revenue stream.
“For illustration, international fees in our 2022-2023 forecasts, are amounting to around $11 million, or about 22.5 per cent of tuition revenues for the university,” Piché said.
“If we look on the basis of enrolment, we're looking at about 425 students out of 4,900 students, so about 8.6 per cent.”
There has been a freeze on domestic tuition fees for the last few years, but there are no such restrictions on tuition fees for international students, he said.
“We feel that at this time, we don't want to increase international fees to sort of help engage international students to come to campus, to come to Laurentian,” Piché said.
He said Laurentian is competitive with other small universities and “very competitive generally with other institutions.”
Piché said there are some areas, especially at the graduate level, where international tuition fees are higher than peer institutions. He said the university’s international pricing practices will be reviewed “as we move on in the next fiscal year.”
A document provided by Laurentian showed that the university charged $25,960 in tuition for undergraduate arts and science programs in 2021-2022, which is about $5,615 less than the Ontario average.
Among comparator small universities, Laurentian charged about $2,119 more than the average for undergraduate arts and science programs last year.
At the graduate level, Laurentian charged $21,542 for international students to study for their MA last year, which is comparable to the $21,665 Ontario average, and less than the $22,579 charged by other Ontario universities.
As Piché stated, there are some areas of study at the graduate level where Laurentian charges more than other Ontario universities.
To study for a MSW (master’s of social work) degree, Laurentian is charging $32,225. That’s $5,569 higher than the Ontario average, and $4,613 more than the average among other small Ontario universities.
Hemliss Konan, president of the Association des etudiantes et étudiants francophones de l’université Laurentienne, asked if Laurentian had considered reducing international student tuition fees.
Piché said the university is not considering doing that. He said that if Laurentian were to reduce its fees, its programs may be perceived by international students as being of an inferior quality.
“But we definitely want to stay competitive with our, with our peer institutions so that we don't put ourselves at a disadvantage,” he said.
Heidi Ulrichsen is the associate content editor at Sudbury.com. She also covers education and the arts scene.
