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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.