When it comes to COVID-19 pandemic teaching moments, places of higher learning in Canada will be near the head of the class as the country heads into a new school year.
2021-22’s Economics 101 refresher course, for example, could prove to be difficult. The pandemic as uncompromising professor will be leading the instruction. Among the hard numbers set for Canadian universities’ consideration are those that illustrate the dangers of their increased reliance on tuition revenue in general and tuition revenue from international students in particular.
Analysis in a recent Statistics Canada paper provides some basic estimates and projections for university consideration and consternation.
Consider, for example, the rapid rise in university reliance on tuition as a percentage of their overall revenue: nationally, it has jumped 41.1% to $12.2 billion in 2018-19 compared with $8.7 billion in 2013-14.
Meanwhile, between 2005-06 and 2018-19, international student enrolment in Canadian universities increased 223% while domestic student enrolment increased 14%. Considering that foreign students pay roughly four times more in tuition fees than their domestic counterparts, that international student inflow has been good news for Canadian universities.
But, as it has with most business plans, the pandemic has turned good news to bad. COVID-19 travel restrictions and operational uncertainties largely turned off 2020-21’s foreign student tuition fee tap.
For universities in B.C., which draw an estimated 34.9% of their revenue from international student tuition fees, that is a problem. It is contributing to what the StatCan analysis estimates will be 2020-21 losses at Canadian universities ranging between $438 million and $2.5 billion.
It remains to be seen how B.C.’s offshore tuition inflow will be affected as the world rolls into another pandemic year. But a key takeaway from the recent pandemic economics lesson for local post-secondary education institutions is the danger of becoming too reliant on revenue from outside Canada’s borders.
