University funding | Financial incentives for priority areas

Quebec will offer financial incentives to universities for registrations and graduation in areas where there is a labor shortage.

This measure was announced Monday morning in the new university funding policy of the Minister of Higher Education, Pascale Déry.

The Legault government thus wants to meet labor needs “in public services and sectors considered priorities for the Quebec economy,” we explain in a press release.

This measure, estimated at 175 million, will be implemented gradually until 2028.

The new policy also provides for an increase in fees for international and Canadian students outside Quebec – a measure already announced a year ago by the government which sparked an outcry from English-speaking universities.

Quebec thus wants to “correct the funding imbalance between university establishments”, indicates the government in a press release. As planned, the measure will come into force from next fall.

According to the government, in 2023, there were 57,150 international students out of a total of 309,564 students in Quebec’s 19 universities.

Another irritant for English-speaking universities: Quebec will provide funding to establishments so that they contribute to the Frenchization of non-Quebec students. McGill University stated last December in certain media that it feared that such francization measures would cause an exodus of international students to Ontario.

The new policy also includes an increase in the proportion of unconditional funding to “mitigate the impact of fluctuations in student numbers on these establishments”.

“This results in a better balance between variability and predictability of financing,” the document adds.

Quebec specifies that its funding for universities has increased by 27% since 2019-2020, going from 3.3 billion to 4.2 billion in 2024-2025.

“The revision of the Quebec University Funding Policy does not entail any cost over the horizon of the government’s financial framework. In fact, the sum of annual reallocations is always equivalent to zero,” it is written in the government document.