So as long as UBC thinks that an international student will be successful — that is pass in a program — then they can be admitted, no matter how their grades compare to the grades required of domestic students for admittance.

Do you think it is fair that international students, if they pay $36,600 a year in tuition compared to $5,200 for Canadian students, get into the University of B.C. with lower grades than required of Canadian students? That can’t be true, can it? Yes it can.

The UBC Senate, the academic governance body of the university, when it first brought in differential tuition fees for international students in 1996, stated that the number of international students in any undergraduate program could be no more than 15 per cent of the number of domestic students, and that international student grades on admission must meet or exceed those of domestic students.

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However, by the first decades of the new millennium, many programs and faculties at UBC were exceeding the 15 per cent limit, with no administrative consequences, as was UBC overall, as international students as a percentage of all enrolment at the university first exceeded 15 per cent in 2012-13. At the same time, B.C.’s and Canada’s international education strategies of 2012 and 2014 were giving UBC a green light to admit as many international students as it could, becoming an important instrument of immigration, export and labour market policy, regardless of them meeting the admissions grades required of domestic students.

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Hence, in March 2014, UBC decided that the 1996 Senate policy was “out-of-step with the university’s internationalization and diversity goals” and the Senate agreed to a new ones — that UBC would set enrolment targets separately for domestic and international students in each program, that student demand for admission relative to these targets shall determine the competitive admissions standards separately for domestic and international students and that UBC will separately adjust admissions averages for domestic and international students to meet its targets.

The UBC vice-provost was quoted in 2017, “There is no competition for seats between domestic and international students because they belong to different admissions streams.” However, what is obviously more to the point is that the policy allows for differential admissions standards for domestic and international students.

For example, in programs where there is large, unmet domestic student demand, the competitive grades for domestic students to be admitted might be in the 90s. However, for international students, there might be only be a small excess demand relative to supply of seats targeted, so they might get in with grades in the 70s because they are competing in a different, likely less competitive admissions stream. In this way UBC is able to maximize revenue and not turn away international students paying lucratively high tuition fees just because they don’t meet the high grades needed for domestic student applicants.

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As UBC’s director of undergraduate admissions explained in March 2017, “the intention is to aim for the domestic target if the program has more domestic applicants than it can accommodate, the cut-offs go high. But if they do not have as many international applicants and can accommodate, as long as the faculty feels those students will be successful, then a different GPA can be used … In terms of outcomes since 2014, these revisions have allowed Vancouver to get to target on international students but has led to a variation on competitive admission criteria …. The argument to be made is that as long as those international students prove to be successful, then it is OK.

“International students shouldn’t be disadvantaged because competition in the domestic market is so high if they present criteria that would make us think they could be successful. There is, on the other hand, a fairness issue … international students be disadvantaged if the domestic market is so competitive or minimizing the disadvantages lead to a form of inequality because they then could get in with a lower competitive score compared to domestic students.”

But not too complicated. The tuition fees charged to international students easily win the argument for the university.

International students at UBC are deemed at a “minimum comparable quality” to domestic students if they are fit to be admitted to UBC (meet the minimum admissions standards of marks of around 67 per cent) and turn out to be as “successful” at UBC as domestic students, that is, that they pass their courses and graduate.

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So as long as UBC thinks that an international student will be successful — that is pass in a program — then they can be admitted, no matter how their grades compare to the grades required of domestic students for admittance. Hence it is entirely possible, and perfectly acceptable to UBC, for international students to be admitted with lower grades than those needed of domestic students.

Is this acceptable to B.C. taxpayers? In effect, international students are able to buy their way into UBC by being in a different admissions stream, paying staggeringly high fees, in a manner that domestic students cannot. B.C. families who have paid their taxes over the decades to help fund B.C.’s post-secondary institutions, are unable even to offer to pay the $36,600 for their kids to get in — thankfully — but an international student with the same 85-per-cent average can. This sells seats at UBC to the highest bidder, except that domestic students are unable to bid.

That UBC has been able to double tuition fees for international students in recent years yet been able at the same time to admit many more international students, suggests that academic admissions standards may have been reduced to mesh with government policy. UBC is able to choose both the price of admission and the quantity of seats sold, via adjusting its admissions standards. With UBC now basically selling access to the highest bidder, questions of equity and fairness arise.

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Might we ask whether Canadian and B.C. students and citizens have some rights over and above international students to UBC, one of their society’s premier social and public goods, the fruits of successful nationhood and provincehood over the last 100 years or so, and should UBC do more to protect these interests of domestic citizens?

Peter Wylie is an a ssociate professor of economics at the University of B.C.’s Okanagan campus.

Letters to the editor should be sent to sunletters@vancouversun.com. The editorial pages editor is Gordon Clark, who can be reached at gclark@postmedia.com