On November 20, UBC’s Board of Governors’ Finance Committee voted to increase UBC’s acceptance deposit for prospective international undergraduate students from $1,000 to $3,000. This change is set to take effect for UBC’s incoming 2025/26 Winter class.
In addition to tripling the acceptance deposit fee, the Board also changed its partial refund policy to a no-refund policy. International students who accept their offer of admission but later decide not to attend UBC have previously been eligible to receive a 50 per cent refund of their $1,000 deposit; for the 2025/26 academic year, those students will instead lose the entirety of their $3,000 deposit.
Students who do attend UBC will not be impacted by the change because the acceptance deposit cost will count towards their first-term tuition. Only failure to obtain a study permit will qualify students for a near-complete refund.
According to the Committee’s report, UBC’s rationale for the raise is to encourage good faith acceptance and to ascertain more exact enrolment numbers. The Committee said more accurate predictions of student attendance will help UBC to better allocate resources.
This raise follows a host of other changes that have recently impacted international students. Beginning in 2024, the Canadian federal government raised the minimum financial requirement for international student visas from $10,000 to $20,635. In September of 2024, the number of international student study permits for the 2025/26 academic year was reduced from 485,000 to 437,000.
In February of 2024, the Migrant Students Union (MSU) criticized UBC in a statement to The Ubyssey for its lacking support of international students.
“[UBC] is charging more than 5 times for international student tuition to fund higher education instead of asking the provincial government for funding, yet providing no support against policies that hurt their students. We ask the university, if you can use international students as cash cows, then you must speak out for their rights,” the MSU wrote.
According to UBC’s 2024/25 $3.8 billion budget, funds from international students’ tuition totaled $662 million while domestic students’ tuition summed to $424 million. International students account for 27.9 per cent and 21.6 per cent of UBC’s Vancouver and Okanagan campuses respectively.
In a prior statement to The Ubyssey about the visa cap, then-Acting Senior Director of UBC Media Relations Matthew Ramsey said UBC was concerned changes to Canadian immigration policy could erode Canada’s global reputation.
In a new statement, Ramsey told The Ubyssey that UBC does not see the deposit increase impacting UBC’s reputation.
“This increase puts UBC’s international undergraduate acceptance deposit rate in line with other universities in Canada and across the sector,” he wrote.
According to the Committee report, universities such as the University of Toronto and the University of Victoria are considering deposit fee increases. However, no universities in Canada except Simon Fraser University, Western University and UBC have enacted increases so far.
During the Committee meeting, Provost and VP Academic Dr. Gage Averill presented on UBC’s 2024/25 enrolment statistics. He noted a 3.5 per cent decrease in international undergraduate student enrolment, which he called a “significant decline.”
“All Canadian universities are struggling mightily with downturns in international students,” Averill added, and he listed a number of contributing factors to the decreases.
When asked if UBC was concerned whether the acceptance deposit raise could impact international application numbers, Ramsey wrote that “deposits will not impact the number of applications.”
Governor Jessie Dusangh asked the Finance Committee "if any consideration has been given to the fact that this kind of change kind of disproportionately punishes people that are from weaker financial backgrounds."
“That was definitely one of the things that we discussed,” UBCO Principal and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Lesley Cormack replied. “However, this is part of their tuition, so it’s a matter of timing as opposed to more money. [But] obviously, if they walk away from it, it’s more money for them.”
The resolution passed with no abstentions or objections.
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