All Quebec universities have been hard hit by Quebec's refusal to fund them adequately. For years, they've watched successive provincial governments back away, in the face of student protests, from needed tuition hikes.
In one field, management, McGill University has decided to try to break free of the province's funding stranglehold. Next year, its executive MBA program will dispense with provincial funding altogether and become self-financing. Tuition will increase to an eye-popping $29,500 a year from the current $3,239 per year.
The Quebec government is reacting unreasonably. We won't give you enough money, it is telling McGill, and we don't want you raising the money yourself, either.
Self-funding business schools have become common in Canada, although not in Quebec. The most expensive is the Schulick-Kellogg Executive MBA program at York at $108,000, a fee that includes travel and residence abroad.
Quebec's fees are, by comparison, rock bottom. And that's unsustainable, said Peter Todd, dean of the McGill's Desautels faculty of management. A McGill MBA costs the school $22,000 per student per year. This means, Todd explained, that once tuition and other subsidies are factored in, there is an annual per-student shortfall of $10,000.
It is unfair to expect other students to subsidize the executive MBA program, said Todd. The program's students, who already have business experience and average about 28 years old, typically double their income after graduation, Todd said.
That seems to us to be enough to justify this increase. Other students - doctors, for example - also earn more because of their university qualifications, but there's a social utility to doctors; MBA students mostly end up in the private, for-profit sector. This distinction might help explain why the university has no plans to "privatize" other courses.
McGill has reacted with surprise to the province's complaints. McGill served notice of this plan last fall, and two years ago, McGill and the Hautes études commerciales, the Université de Montréal's business school, jointly set up a 15-month executive MBA program with fees of $65,000. Fully a decade ago, McGill set up a master's program in manufacturing management with fees of $30,000.
If Quebec doesn't have the political courage to increase tuition fees across the board, it should stay out of McGill's way as it tries to keep its executive MBA program at a world-class level.