By CAUT Staff

A report from a Quebec institute says high tuition fees and the prospect of going into debt discourage less affluent students from pursuing post-secondary education and the study recommends that the province eliminate fees.

According to the Institut de recherche et d’informations socioéconomiques, free university education in Quebec would cost approximately $1.2 billion annually — an amount which is equivalent to all fees currently paid by domestic and international students.

The provincial government’s 2021-2022 total expenditure on all public services, including education, is $116.9 billion.

The researchers say the free tuition model would work in Quebec because it is financially viable and they note that university and college systems with high fees are the exception, not the norm, around the word. The researchers’ recommendation is based on the low-fee or fee-free models of countries including France, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

The researchers warn that the burden for students to pay off their education debts may lead many to favour jobs with the highest incomes, regardless of their true social utility, and they note with concern the broader trend towards privatization and “commodification” of education.

Last March, more than 82,000 students went on strike across Quebec to demand free education, a decade after an unprecedented protest against tuition hikes in 2012.

In 2013, the provincial government started linking the annual rate of tuition fees hike to per capita household disposable income, adjusting for inflation.

But the report says that tuition indexation no longer has a place as a method of funding post-secondary education.