In late February, the private not-for-profit Quest University in Squamish, BC, announced it was ceasing all operations at the end of the current academic year. Local government in Squamish provided significant tax breaks and incentives to Quest over the years, yet the campus was sold to Primacorp Ventures in 2020, which placed the physical assets of the university in for-profit hands. The BC government was forced to intervene and assure students that they would be given aid in continuing with their education.
Other private universities have sprung up in the Lower Mainland of BC over the past decades, including Fairleigh Dickinson University and University Canada West. FDU is a not-for-profit university with campuses in New Jersey and England. UCW is a for-profit university owned by Global University Systems. UCW often points to its foundation in 2005 by the former president of University of Victoria, David Strong, as evidence of its wholesome and mainstream lineage. Quest University was likewise the creation of David Strangway, the former president of UBC. Strangway considered a number of locations before choosing Squamish, including a defunct university campus in Nelson, BC, which had been closed by the Social Credit government in 1984 due to budget cuts.
The new secular private universities popping up in BC have several traits in common. Each charge far higher domestic tuition fees than public universities, but align with other Canadian universities in their international tuition rates. Accordingly, domestic students make up a very small proportion of the student body of universities like Quest or UCW. This focus detaches them from their host communities as educational institutions. While they may employ locals as staff or faculty, and generate jobs through student consumer spending, they are often oriented toward international recruitment and business-focused education. For example, Quest University exists in the catchment area of Capilano University. CapU has no formal campuses in either Squamish or Whistler. Yet CapU operates Ts̓zil Learning Centre in Lillooet, a community 189 kilometers northeast of Squamish. This highlights the impact of Quest in diluting or negating public investment in higher education in the Sea-to-Sky corridor.
In both UCW and QuestU’s history, the BC government has had to intervene with emergency support during times of fiscal uncertainty or failure. Quest University’s faculty was only recently unionized while UCW operates without any union. Canadians would be outraged to discover that a large private hospital was operating in the heart of one of their largest cities and catering almost exclusively to high-paying international clients in the name of profit. Yet this situation exists in higher education in BC and other provinces. The model is spreading. The University of Niagara Falls is set to open in Niagara Falls, ONntario, in 2024. UNF will be operated by Global University Systems, the same firm that runs UCW.
Doug Ford’s government in Ontario stood by in 2021 as Laurentian University in Sudbury cut over 100 faculty and axed numerous valued programs in order to satisfy fiscal demands and creditors. Northern Ontario lost access dozens of academic programs and research possibilities as a result. This trend presents a strange paradox where public universities are expected to operate along similar lines to private institutions where the imperative of fiscal solvency and even surplus exceeds the educational needs of the local community.
Major public universities in Canada are simultaneously increasingly funded through real-estate development projects, private donors, and international tuitions. Universities like UBC and Cape Breton University have made headlines for their dependence on extremely high rates of international tuition. This policy exploits Canada’s public investment in higher education as marketable assets by which to harness the consumer spending power of students from overseas. The University of British Columbia even operates Vantage College – a private institution targeting international students who require additional English language education before admission to the general student body. Simon Fraser University is partnered with Fraser International College – a private college similar in purpose to Vantage College. FIC is operated by Navitas Limited.
Public universities are becoming increasingly privatized in Canada. BC provides some of the most startling examples of this trend. The expansion and increasing number of private universities and even for-profit universities in Canada has no historic precedent in our country. Unlike the United States, universities in Canada are typically public assets, particularly in the western provinces. Yet the distinction between public universities and private profit-driven universities is diminishing. Canadians must take action to prevent the private capture of yet another public asset. Unlike telecoms, electricity grids, or auto insurance, public education is at the heart of cultural reproduction and self-formation. Public education is one of the few remaining paths to material equity. Canadians should guard against the privatization of universities even more than they would a hospital.
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