Page 102 - EW November 2023

International News

CANADA erable damage. “They could discourage Indian students by
India-Canada row fallout many means,” says Roopa Trilokekar, an associate professor
of education at York University, including warnings about
security risks, or playing up instances of anti-immigrant
sentiment.

CHINA
Universities hike tuition fees

UNIVERSITIES ACROSS CHINA ARE RAISING
their tuition fees as the academic year begins, in a
move that some academics believe could signal a
shift to a Western-style market system.
After roughly a decade of stagnant fees, this year dozens
of institutions have announced hikes — at some, charges
have gone up by more than 50 percent compared with last
year. Experts say such rises had been a long time coming,
after years of relatively cheap education and growing finan-
Indian students in Canada: mobility danger cial pressures on institutions.
At the East China University of Science and Technol-
THE ESCALATING DIPLOMATIC ROW between ogy, annual tuition fees for 2023-24 have climbed from
Ottawa and New Delhi has the potential to deter RMB 5,000 (Rs.56,802) to RMB 7,700 (Rs.87,477) — a 54
thousands of Indian undergraduates from studying percent rise. At Shanghai University of Electric Power, the
in Canada, academics have warned. standard tuition fee, previously capped at RMB 5,000, has
After Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau suggested been raised to RMB 7,000.
that India might have been behind the assassination of a A number of local educational authorities have also ad-
Sikh leader and Canadian national in British Columbia, justed their guidance to universities, with Shanghai, Jilin
New Delhi closed its visa-processing centre for Canadians, and Sichuan among the provinces that have announced
halting the issuing of new visas. similar adjustments since January. China’s government had
Academics warn that if the rift continues to grow, it could sought to hold fees low for many years in a bid to promote
have devastating consequences for student mobility. “If the higher education’s expansion, ordering a five-year freeze in
Indians and/or the Canadians…cancel visa issuing, that’s 2007 in response to universities’ increases. There was an-
a huge problem,” says Philip Altbach, professor of higher other round of hikes in 2014, but fees have remained largely
education at Boston College. stable since then.
Altbach says one doesn’t have to look far to see what If such increases become widespread, they could bring
happens when a country weaponises education, with the China closer towards a Western-style higher education sys-
Trump-era attempts to stop issuing US visas to Muslim tem, where the cost of study is tied more closely to demand,
countries causing a large dip in student numbers from af- some scholars believe. “I think this sort of market mecha-
fected countries. nism…will eventually be the norm in Chinese universities,
Although the number of India-bound Canadian scholars especially as they’re gearing up to be a world-class univer-
and students is so small as to be a “non-issue”, traffic in the sity system,” says James Chin, professor of Asian studies at
other direction is substantial, he said. More than 40 per- the University of Tasmania.
cent of the 800,000 international students in the country in According to Chin, such a change might also help to
2022 were from India, making it the largest source country prepare institutions to take in “a lot more” international
for overseas learners. students. “Right now, most of the international students
Ratna Ghosh, professor emerita of education at McGill studying in Chinese universities go to only the elite uni-
University, suggests that Indian students might choose to versities. I suspect they want the number to spread wider,
head elsewhere. “Since Covid, international student flows with more…going to non-elite universities, especially the
have taken a turn, and Indian students are going to other regional universities, places like Hunan, which is not widely
countries in Europe and Asia. With international univer- known,” says Chin.
sities opening branch campuses in India, many have the Edward Vickers, who researches contemporary history
choice to get foreign degrees without the extra cost of going of education in Chinese societies at Kyushu University, says
and living in Canada,” she says. there was “already an element” of the market system at play,
Although scholars doubt that India could stop students with China’s elite public universities tending to charge less
from going to Canada, they say it could still wreak consid- than private ones — and cost often having an “inverse re-

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