the briefing room

Seven years after moving from her Caribbean island of St. Maarten to study at Toronto’s York University, Vanessa Hunt says she would be happy to call Canada home after graduation.

But after spending her early adult years living, working and studying in the city, the 25-year-old says she still feels unfairly pitted against her Canadian peers because of higher tuition fees.

“It’s been a rough ride,” says Hunt, who’s been shelling out between $14,000 and $18,000 a year to study dance and education at Canada’s third largest university.

“I have no savings at all. Not a dime for myself.”

The Canadian Federation of Students says on average, international students attending university in Canada spend about $16,000 on annual tuition. The organization says that’s about three times the amount domestic students pay.

Roxanne Dubois, the federation’s national chairwoman, says there’s a persistent myth that all international students come from wealthy families and can easily cover the cost of their tuition.

She says international students are bearing the brunt of a woefully underfunded system.

“Colleges and universities are very much in budget crunches where they’re suffering from cuts to post-secondary education that happened in the 1990s,” says Dubois, 27… Read More