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From: wagner@utcs.UUCP
Newsgroups: uw.general,uw.grad.cs,ont.general
Subject: Re: Unfairness with Foreign Students
Message-ID: <1986Dec31.113314.24740@utcs.uucp>
Date: Wed, 31-Dec-86 11:33:14 EST
Article-I.D.: utcs.1986Dec31.113314.24740
Posted: Wed Dec 31 11:33:14 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 31-Dec-86 18:49:08 EST
References: <8056@watdaisy.UUCP> <4129@watmath.UUCP>
Reply-To: wagner@utcs.UUCP (Michael Wagner)
Distribution: ont
Organization: University of Toronto Computing Services, general purpose UNIX
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In article <4129@watmath.UUCP> rbutterworth@watmath.UUCP writes:
>There is something I've never understood about the differential
>fees.
>
>A typical foreign student will easily spend five or ten thousand
>dollars of his own country's money a year while staying in Canada.
>After four years he will leave the country with nothing but one
>small piece of paper.

Would it be too much to expect that he also leaves with an education? :-)

>Now, if I went to the government and told them I had a business
>that exported paper at $30,000 a piece, with most of that money
>being spent in small local businesses, I'm sure the government
>would do all it could in grants and low cost loans to get this
>business started.

Sadly, this is probably true.  Please don't tell them that; they 
might be convinced (by your incorrect argument).

>So, why can't they look at foreign students the same way?
>[...]
>So what am I missing?

You are missing the fact that, for Canadians, tuition is something less
than 10% of the direct cost of the education that they're getting (anyone
know recent figures?).  Visa students pay more (but still not all) of the
true cost of their education.  This policy is not out of line with many
other places in the west.  Way back when I was shopping for undergraduate
education, there were three rates in many american universities.  They were
1. in state
2. out of state
3. out of country
The issue here is merely tax realities.  The place hosting your education
can't be expected to subsidize your education to the same extent as if you
had been paying into the tax system all that time.  Many countries recognize
this.  France, I think, is one.  If you go to America to study, France sends
along with you some of their tax money that otherwise would have subsidized
your French education.  If a visa student doesn't have that sort of support
from their own country, it isn't clear that Canada should (or has the 
resources to) provide it.

In the end, though, I think the business case is the wrong way to decide
this issue.  Subsidization of education is done, not for direct business
reasons, but because society has decided that the whole society benefits
from the education of it's young.  I think arguments for/against differential
rate structures for visa students would be more convincing if phrased in
terms of benefits to society.  Universities, at least, have always hated
being beholden to business.  

Michael