Anglo universities offer to teach more French
Bishop’s, Concordia and McGill are offering to make sure 40% of their graduates are able to speak French, in return for a rollback of the planned tuition hike.
Legault et cie must be giggling at watching the anglos grovel.
Update: The CAQ have turned down the offer. Oh, they are loving this.
Tim S. 20:08 on 2023-11-06 Permalink
Maybe. But the idea itself isn’t bad. If undergraduate me had gone as an exchange student to Spain, I would have at least intended to learn Spanish.
PO 20:33 on 2023-11-06 Permalink
I can’t imagine there’s anything preventing the government from requiring the universities to setup large French departments and requiring non-French speakers from being required to take X number of credits. Or French proficiency exams prior to graduation.
I’d support that. Teach students from out of province French and make them employable in Quebec.
But the CAQ won’t do that or anything similar. Because they’re not actually concerned with protecting French. They’re concerned with getting votes.
DeWolf 21:54 on 2023-11-06 Permalink
It’s a great idea. The anglo universities should bend over backwards to get their out-of-province students to learn French. Who doesn’t benefit from learning a new language, especially one that is essential to where they are currently living?
But as PO said, the CAQ doesn’t actually care about French. They care about a very specific cultural idea of Quebec.
Ian 22:24 on 2023-11-06 Permalink
I guess having a French exit exam as a hoop for funding would never come back to bite anyone in the ass or be interpreted as an opportunity to impose further “requirements”.
That said, I am sure that the universities realize that the CAQ will never g for it so it might actually be a clever move to prove bad faith… except that as DeWolf points out, it was never really about speaking French, but rather, being French, which you cannot simply learn.
“Moins d’une personne sur deux (46,8 %) au Québec est susceptible de démontrer la maîtrise de compétences en littératie la rendant capable de lire en vue d’apprendre, de comprendre, d’agir ou d’intervenir en toute autonomie. En 2003, 51,1 % des répondants se trouvaient à ce niveau.”
https://fondationalphabetisation.org/lanalphabetisme/les-enquetes-et-statistiques/
This is not a society that respects education.
Annette 02:21 on 2023-11-07 Permalink
It should also be added that when you’re in an intensive programme, fully focused on your subject of study, sacrificing your personal life to complete your work, one doesn’t have time/bandwidth to accept even the ‘gen ed’ classes unis sometimes throw at international students, NEVERMIND acquire a whole new language.
That level of scholastic dedication might be unknown to such policy-makers, idk.
Kate 09:29 on 2023-11-07 Permalink
As I’ve mentioned, my sister spent the last part of her nursing qualification mostly studying French and worrying about the French test, rather than acquiring more nursing knowledge and skills. So must most people in the program. The test is rigorous even if you grew up speaking some amount of French.
Ian 09:36 on 2023-11-07 Permalink
I have one friend here that came from BC. She trained to be an oncology nurse in the Quebec system, and literally the only thing standing in her way from starting work was the French exam.
She ended up teaching nursing at CEGEP instead, still lives here, and is contributing member of society in a specialized field in high demand.
Of course if her tuition had been double she probably wouldn’t have come here.
Joey 12:41 on 2023-11-07 Permalink
I wonder if this problem will sort itself out. I read (I think it was Alex Usher who had the numbers) that the net migration of Quebec university students (i.e., the number of non-QC Canadians who study here minus the number of Quebecers who study elsewhere in Canada) is basically zero; if other provinces eventually hike tuition for QC students, we might wind up with more QC students studying in-province, effectively mitigating the impact, at leas from an enrolment perspective (lots of ifs to deal with, etc.).
The proposal from the English universities was good marketing, but it doesn’t stand up to too much scrutiny – it amounts to ‘pay us loads to do some French-language instruction’… Anyway, Legault was never going to seriously consider it…
Anton 03:38 on 2023-11-08 Permalink
@Joey
I don’t think the problem is net migration of student populations between the provinces. It’s about putting up walls.
Joey 10:19 on 2023-11-08 Permalink
@anton sorry, you’re right, I meant the narrow problem of hit to Concordia and McGill’s finances – walls work two ways, right? Meaning that, when the dust sadly settles there may be an equivalent number of Quebecers who have little choice but to study here, generating revenue for these two universities.
Orr 10:39 on 2023-11-08 Permalink
Stockholm syndrome by “leaders” of these universities.
Anton 11:48 on 2023-11-08 Permalink
@joey
Yes, walls end up working both ways. Even if technically set up to block movement primarily in one direction.
Joey 12:18 on 2023-11-08 Permalink
Not that it really matters, but the extent to which the three English universities pre-emptively patted themselves on the back for this offer is a little excessive, no? An ‘unprecedented’ offer = we finally acknowledge that maybe we should offer broad-based (compulsory?) French-language instruction to our non-Francophone students. Seems far from a historic proposal, no?
Tim 15:30 on 2023-11-08 Permalink
Degrees may require that a student takes some credits in another domain but it is always up to the student to decide the area of study. University is not high school. One example is that engineering degrees may require students to take a couple of courses in the arts. I cannot think of any other university initiative that would be so prescriptive as to require a student to take French courses in order to get a degree in an unrelated domain. I think that it is fair to call it unprecedented, historic and an olive branch. One which Legault had no intention at all of accepting.
CE 21:37 on 2023-11-08 Permalink
I would think with the number of Quebec students studying at English universities, the number of students who can speak French is probably at least 40%. Most people I knew at Concordia had at least a cursory knowledge of French.
@Tim, I was looking to do a masters degree in Iceland and one of the requirements for international students was that they had to take Icelandic classes while studying (the program was offered in English).
Tim 10:01 on 2023-11-09 Permalink
You got me @CE. 🙂 I guess, it’s not unprecedented…