My university will now charge international students the same very low tuition fee that we charge in-state students. We have no admissions criteria, which means that everybody who applies is accepted. Some people who don’t apply are also accepted.
This is a bizarre measure to adopt in the midst of a budget crisis of such proportions that programs need to be eliminated and people fired. I have no explanation for this project other than that it’s an immigration scam.
Clarissa's Blog 
“charge international students the same very low tuition fee that we charge in-state students”
The land-grant university whose bureaucracy I worked in for a time had in-state and out-of-state tuition but it was just that… based on residence in the state and non-citizens who’d lived in the state long enough qualified for in-state tuition.
But yeah… this totally sounds like an immigration scam, hardly the first I’ve heard of in modern post-secondary education.
Your union (if they care) might try to figure out where the university is advertising… and the forensic accountant might also want to check into that. I’m sure they have recruitment offices or pay recruiters fees for warm bodies who show up at the campus.
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Immigration scam is the most parsimonious explanation.
Who’s getting paid and how?
Like, since all the USAID revelations, I’m so curious about the mechanics of all this semi-official, semi-legal bakshish going around. It’s fascinating.
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Or they want to ruin what’s left of your university. Do same rules apply to the other campus?
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That’s a good question. I honestly don’t know. We aren’t allowed to ask questions about it or mention it at all. It’s like the name of the sister university is the worst profanity.
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Well, if the ultimate goal is downsizing, then closing down a sub-campus would work… making that sub-campus fail would justify the closure, sale of assets etc.
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I think this is a current trend for schools with struggling enrollments. One of the struggling universities in my region has proposed in-state tuition for students from all neighboring states. That might get a few more bodies into classrooms, but unless they get a lot of extra students it will just result in less money coming in.
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Exactly. All this means is more budget cuts. Why it’s not obvious to the administration is incomprehensible. I don’t want to engage in conspiracy theories but they are either incredibly stupid or are doing this on purpose. Given that our Chancellor compared physics to typewriter repair, I don’t discount the possibility that they are actually that stupid.
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In Canada, tuition fees of international students are generally considerable higher than Canadians, but of course there exist shit for brains federal and provincial bureaucrats that can sometimes provide for a scholarship, fellowship or grant to study in Canada at the taxpayer’s expense. And no, we were not ever asked if we thought either their presence or a subsidy was a good idea ;-D
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