The myth of affordable Canadian tuition

By now, we're all aware that Canadian university students are paying a lot more in tuition than their parents or even their older siblings once did. Nationwide, costs have risen by 118.2% in real dollars since 1990-91, a recent Statistics Canada study on enrollment in professional programs indicated that fewer and fewer middle-class Canadians are enrolling, as they are no longer able to afford to pay costs associated with attending these programs, and more and more universities are even finding it necessary to establish food banks for students who are cutting corners to pay for tuition. Sobering statistics, especially when compared with various European countries' ultra-low fees. But at least we're still better off up here than the Americans are, right?

Except that as it turns out, that oft-repeated truism isn't actually, you know, true.

Carol is a student at a large Midwestern U.S. university[*]. Hers is a "state university" [**], i.e., a public institution funded by her state's government [***]. The tuition cost there is figured at around USD$6,000 per semester, which sounds staggeringly high to a Canadian. However, that amount covers not only fees for classes, but also fees for student health care, registration, room, board, and books. Additionally, the quoted $6,000 is much higher than what Carol--and the vast majority of her fellow students--actually pays. In the U.S., most public universities such as Carol's have pledged to meet 100% of the financial need demonstrated by each incoming student, in the form of a financial aid package that comes to them as a combination of grants and loans.

Every February, all U.S. students who want to be considered for federal aid fill out a form called the Federal Application for Free Student Aid (FAFSA). This form takes into account two factors: any income the students earn (90% of which they are expected to contribute toward their education and education-related expenses, such as room and board) and the income of anyone claiming them as a dependent (10% of which is also expected to go into the same pot). So based on Carol's parents' lower-middle class income and Carol's own earnings from a part-time student job, the U.S. government gives her, per-semester, a grant amounting to USD$2025, various other small grants amounting to USD$1100 in total, and federal loans (which she must pay back) totalling around USD$3500. This means that her actual per-semester out-of-pocket cost--for tuition, fees, room, board, and books--is more or less zero. And none of those grants are performance-based--for those students with truly stellar grades or even certain extracurricular involvements, those numbers can go up substantially.

Contrast that with Helen, a student at a large university in western Canada, where tuition costs around CAN$2000 per semester. On the surface of things, that sounds like one heck of a lot less than Carol pays, but keep in mind that that amount only covers actual fees for courses, not room, board, or books. Like Carol, Helen also fills out a yearly form determining her financial aid, which is then calculated based on an expected parental contribution of 10% of their income, how long she'd been off from school over the summer, and how much money she'd made during that time. As in Carol's situation, the Canadian financial aid system Helen is subject to is set up so that any difference is made up between the amount her parents are deemed responsible for and the actual cost. However, in contrast to Carol's situation, that difference isn't given to Helen as a combination of grants and loans, but exclusively as loans that Helen will have to pay back.

Now, if you remember, Carol also ends up with loans amounting to about USD$3500 per semester, which runs a little higher than Helen's Canadian per-semester debt. However, Helen is expected to pay for room and board and books by working over the summer, or by asking for money from her parents, or perhaps by winning the lottery. The Canadian Student Loan program does offer students like Helen a certain amount for room and board if they can't come up with it any other way, but that is always over and above the amount already given to her for tuition. Which means that if Helen actually wants to eat and pay the rent, the per-semester amount of debt she accrues by attending her Canadian university ends up being more than the per-semester amount of debt Carol accrues by attending her American university.

With respect to graduate education, the differences can be even greater. One factor that many Canadian graduate students don't take into account when pronouncing Canadian universities more reasonably priced than their American counterparts is the fact that many U.S. universities have tuition waivers (hard-won by graduate student employee unions) for any graduate students who work part-time for the university as teaching or research assistants. These are neither need-based nor merit-based, but simply a benefit that goes along with being a graduate student employee. And it comes on top of a meagre salary, from which graduate students can then pay room, board, books, and other life costs, leaving them with no (or at least minimal) loans. For example, I was a graduate student at a state university in the U.S. for six years, during which I taught one section of a class per semester. I never paid a cent in tuition, not the entire time--and neither did any of my out-of-state or international student colleagues. By contrast, my graduate students at the Canadian university where I now work do get paid for serving as teaching assistants, but what they receive doesn't even cover their tuition, much less their room and board. They have to take out loans to cover that.

Now, I am by no means praising the U.S.'s commitment to higher education, here--compared with the low costs of European universities, an American education is indeed appallingly expensive. But the next time you hear Canadians reassuring themselves that while a Canadian education is costly, at least it's cheaper than in the U.S., you might want to draw their attention to the fact that those statements don't actually hold up under scrutiny. And if Canadians really want to be able to claim that our students are better off than American students, then we'd better do something serious about escalating tuition costs, and we'd better do it now. We can do that by offering more generous financial aid packages to students who need them, we can do that by lowering tuition costs, or we can do some combination of the two, but continuing to do nothing at all isn't tenable.


[*] Carol and Helen are both real people who volunteered to have their information used as illustrative examples here, but their names have been changed and other identifying details removed to protect their identities.

[**] Many Canadians don't realize that the U.S. has two types of universities: public and private. Public universities, which form the bulk of U.S. institutions of higher education and are usually called "state universities" because they are funded to a large extent by the individual states, are analogous to Canadian universities. Because university funding comes from state governments rather than the federal government, there are two sets of tuition fees: one for "in-state" students, and one for "out-of-state" students. The cost for out-of-state students is dramatically higher, and since Canadians looking to go to university in the U.S. look at the cost for out-of-state students (natch), they are often under the impression that it costs this much for everyone. That's not the case--most students at state universities are paying in-state rates.

[***] In fact, state universities like Carol's are funded at an average of CAN$5000 more (pdf) per student per year than Canadian universities receive from Canadian provincial governments.