Melissa Fleming turned down Columbia University to start college at McGill University in Montreal last September. She says it was a great choice, despite some homesickness.
Her parents are ecstatic. Their bill for tuition, room and board at McGill is about $10,000 a year in U.S. dollars, compared to $28,000 at Columbia in New York City. “It was amazing to think we could get a school with a great reputation for such a value,” says her mother, Sandra Fleming, a Lucent Technologies Corp. ceramics engineer from Westfield, N.J.
As the Flemings learned, many Canadian universities are rolling out the welcome mats for American students, hoping they will flee punishing college costs the same way they fled their draft boards in the 1960s. Canadian schools are actively promoting their low tuitions and cost of living, and have developed a marketing campaign aimed at overcoming unattractive stereotypes about life north of the border.
Highly regarded McGill, whose alumni include four Nobel Prize winners, is one of the best deals. But nearly all Canadian colleges look like bargains compared with private U.S. schools. The University of Toronto charges $7,700 for tuition and $3,850 for room and board. Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, charges $6,802 for tuition and $3,990 for food and a single room. In contrast, the average U.S. private college charges $20,361 for tuition, room and board.
Canadian school prices can even match some top state schools like the University of Michigan, which charges in-state students $10,990 for tuition, room and board, while out-of-staters pay $23,150. The average public college tuition in the U.S. for in-staters is $9,649 per year.
Canadian schools, which are almost all public institutions, can charge less because provincial taxpayers heavily subsidize tuitions, while the strong U.S. dollar takes the edge off room and board costs. American guidance counselors say the top Canadian universities rank a notch below the best schools in the Ivy League, and compare with large private schools, such as Vanderbilt and Georgetown, or top state universities, like the University of Wisconsin and the University of Virginia.
There are caveats. Canadian colleges are large by U.S. standards, and often have higher student-faculty ratios. The curriculum is more prescribed in some areas, so that engineering majors, for instance, find they can’t take as many elective courses outside their field. And U.S. guidance counselors are not as familiar with Canadian institutions, so students and parents may have to do more research to find schools best suited to their needs. Most Canadian schools want foreign applications in by Jan. 1.
Another financial question is what a Canadian degree is worth in the states. Graduates say their degrees often impress American recruiters. Many American companies with Canadian subsidiaries recruit on campuses for jobs in both countries.
Applicants to U.S. law schools, medical schools and graduate schools may be dependent on their standardized test scores if U.S. grad schools are unfamiliar with their schools’ grading standards. However, many Canadian professors attended U.S. universities, and maintain professional networks that help with recommendations.
Until recently, Canadian colleges eschewed recruiting. But a decline in the number of Canadian applicants, a chance to boost tuition revenue and a desire to diversify their student bodies prompted them to go after Americans. “We’re really seeking top-notch young scholars, because it’s beneficial for both of our societies,” says Jo-Ann Bechthold, registrar at Queen’s University, which Maclean’s magazine’s Canadian college survey ranks as the nation’s No. 2 research university, after the University of Toronto.
McGill, Queen’s and Toronto are sending admissions officers to U.S. college fairs for the first time. The University of Guelph, a 10,000-student school in Guelph, Ontario, is now mass-mailing U.S. students a brochure showing an ice-encrusted student asking, “So you think you know Canada, eh?” The inside of the brochure says, “Well . . . think again,” and touts Guelph. Other schools produced a CD-ROM called “Study in Canada.
Shirley Levin, an independent college counselor in Rockville, Md., says, “Students who can only get into non-selective colleges in the U.S. won’t be admitted to any of these colleges.”
At McGill, applications have declined slightly in recent years, but it remains highly competitive, demanding minimums of 1200 combined SAT scores and a B-plus average in high school. About half the applicants from Canada and 60 percent of those from the U.S. are accepted. In contrast, Harvard accepts just 12 percent of its applicants. Bernard Shapiro, McGill’s principal, or chief academic officer, says his goal is to make the university more cosmopolitan by boosting the current 12 percent international contingent to 25 percent within a few years.
Canadian colleges now have about 2,700 Americans. Several Canadian university officials say they would like to add many more, perhaps bringing the total on par with the number of Canadians in American schools, or about 25,000. But there is a chance that Canadian taxpayer backlash could set in before that happens.
Some Quebec politicians already question why the province should “subsidize someone who doesn’t pay taxes,” says Shapiro. But he notes they are also proud of McGill’s role in making Montreal an international city. Most Canadian provinces have been scaling back their funding of higher education, and some schools have had to lay off faculty, raising questions about whether Canadian schools will remain desirable for U.S. students.
American students say that McGill, like other Canadian schools, doesn’t provide much hand-holding for students who are expected to figure out how to pick classes and fulfill degree requirements. Introductory classes are huge lectures, but students say classes of 30 or fewer predominate after the first year, and even renowned professors are required to teach undergraduates. Increasingly in the U.S., undergraduate classes are taught by junior faculty and graduate students. In liberal arts, McGill’s student-faculty ratio is 20-to-one, higher than at many U.S. private schools.
And then there’s the weather. Although Canadian recruiting brochures invariably picture students in T-shirts lounging in autumn sunshine, Shaun Rein, a McGill sophomore from Concord, N.H., says “winter here is much worse–it’s five months long.” But other students say it’s tolerable. “We’re not talking the Yukon here,” says Erin Kirkwood, a junior from Cincinnati who attends Guelph.
