The University of Calgary is considering hiring a private company to help double its number of foreign undergraduates and generate an estimated $14 million more a year in cash.

Administration officials say they want to quickly change the makeup of a student body that is less diverse than most of the country’s large post-secondaries.

“We are very far behind right now,” U of C Provost Dru Marshall said.

“What we’re trying to see if we can do is get a jump start.”

But the university’s faculty association worries the plan could jeopardize the school’s academic integrity.

“This is a crass attempt to boost the bottom line,” president Paul Rogers said, “that puts the university’s reputation in the hands of a third party whose primary motivation is making a profit.”

Under a proposal that could be approved as early as February, the university would look to contract with one of four foreign firms to recruit overseas students who would normally not qualify for admission.

The successful company — likely to be one of UK-based INTO University Partnerships, New York-based Kaplan Inc., Australia’s Navitas Limited or the Study Group firm whose roots are in Great Britain — would also run an on-campus college where students would brush up on their English and fill other knowledge gaps during their first year of study.

Most existing pathway programs operated by these firms allow those who are successful to enter second year in the university’s regular stream.

“Those students would be above the target the provincial government sets for us,” Marshall said.

“(They) will not be displacing Calgarians, Albertans or other Canadians.”

While at least four institutions in the country have already considered and then shied away from a private tie-up in recent years, three schools — University of Manitoba, Simon Fraser University and Royal Roads University in B.C. — have signed deals.

Navitas had a pre-tax profit margin of 16 per cent last year from its operations in this country. In that time the firm generated more than $40 million in revenue, most of it from the colleges it runs on the U of M and SFU campuses.

“Canadian colleges continue to perform well,” said the company’s 2013 annual report, “though incremental growth rates are now moderating.”

While Navitas’ operations in this country have been profitable, they have not been without controversy.

A year ago, a student at its Winnipeg operation complained in a CBC report that he was misled by an overseas recruiter into believing the institution was part of the U of M. Navitas officials said in a written statement that its Winnipeg college communicates clearly with potential students that it is not part of the university.

SFU extended its deal with Navitas for a further 10 years, despite a 2010 external review that found Chinese language marketing documents did not mention that students at Fraser International College needed to meet eligibility requirements to transfer later to the university.

The review also questioned whether the college was helping to diversify the campus given that three-quarters of its students were from China and Hong Kong, a country that already represents about half of the university’s international undergraduates.