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The University of Guelph is considering partnering with a for-profit company as a way to bring more international students to the university, but not everyone is thrilled.
Navitas is a private company started in Australia in 1994, providing three semester pre-university education and pathway programs to universities around the world. They have partnerships with more than 90 post-secondary institutions globally.
Four of those are in Canada: Wilfrid Laurier, Simon Fraser, Toronto Metropolitan (TMU) and the University of Manitoba.
But the U of G's faculty association calls the partnership potentially exploitative and has formed a committee to oppose the potential move. They also worry that academic standards are being compromised.
Navitas rejects those claims, saying it offers a new pathway to a post-secondary education for international students.
Once a partnership is formed, Navitas essentially sets up a private college associated with the university, with first-year pathway programs to university degrees. They hire their own instructors and develop course outlines based on the learning outcomes of the courses offered at the partner university.
If a student does well enough, they can apply directly to the second year of a degree program at the partner university, essentially as a transfer student.
According to associate vice-president (academic) Byron Sheldrick, the hope is that the program would bring an additional 200 international students over the next five years, with 30 or 40 students in the first cohort.
Increasing the number of international students is something the university needs help with, Sheldrick said. Currently, international students make up 5.6 per cent of the undergraduate student body.
“Our perspective is that international students, when they come here, they really enrich the campus, they enrich our classes, they enrich the learning experience for everyone. And so we really would like to see that increase,” he said. “That's something we have struggled to do. Other universities have done a lot better than us.”
International undergraduate students pay roughly four times what domestic undergraduate students pay. For 2022/2023, the tuition for a full-time international undergrad pursuing a Bachelor of Arts was around $32,500. For domestic students it's roughly $7,600.
Sheldrick said they’re looking at a variety of ways to increase international student recruitment, including a partnership with Navitas, which he said has a “unique strategy and approach.”
However, some faculty have raised concerns about the for-profit nature of the company.
The University of Guelph Faculty Association (UFGA) formed a committee in opposition to the program, drafting a letter to university executives listing concerns they’ve heard from faculty members.
One of the biggest concerns is the for-profit nature of Navitas, which UFGA president Herb Kunze called “exploitative.”
However, head of communications for Navitas North America, Dan Hurley, said in an email Navitas students pay “about the same” tuition as do international students already attending the partner university, as well as the same fees for ancillary services and medical insurance.
According to Hurley, a full year at the TMU Navitas college, consisting of three terms, costs $34,857.78.
For students who need additional language support, there is an “integrated term” that costs $3,118. And for any students who need additional help to qualify for the Navitas pathway program, there is a foundations-type program, which costs $24,280.
Both of these are open only to a small number of students, he said.
When asked for his response to faculty concerns about their for-profit model being exploitative, he said Navitas colleges work with the university partners “to tailor programming to deliver a high level of care to international students.”
“We provide a safe landing place, wraparound student support services, small class sizes and additional class time for students who would not otherwise be able to access university. We provide these opportunities at the same price they would pay if they were directly enrolled at the university. When they leave the college, they enter the second year of a program at the partner institution,” he said.
He also said there is “extensive” oversight. Besides working closely with the partner university, he said each Navitas college is a federally Designated Learning Institution through oversight from the provincial government. In Ontario, this is through the Ministry of Colleges and Universities.
“No matter what the specifics are, for me, it’s a bad deal because it is a private, for-profit organization,” said Shoshanah Jacobs, a professor at U of G and a member of the U of G Senate.
Kunze and Jacobs said faculty are also concerned about the academic standards and values of the university being compromised, high-quality and publicly-funded education being devalued in the name of profit, and the intellectual property of U of G faculty being absorbed by the corporation.
“There are a lot of concerns about compromising the standards and reputation of the university through a deal with Navitas,” Kunze said. “The administration themselves have said the project is about Navitas recruiting students, in their words, who are below the bar for regular admission.”
But Sheldrick said that doesn’t mean they’re bad students. Rather, they might not have nailed the English language proficiency test, or they’re missing a prerequisite to get into a program, or their grade point averages were two or three percentage points lower than the admission cutoff for the university.
“So it's an opportunity for those students who might not have been admissible at the first point, to enhance their skills, to develop themselves and apply a year later and get admitted,” he said, adding that the university accepts transfer students all the time who might not have been accepted directly into the school otherwise.
Jacobs, though, said a partnership would signify the privatization of education slowly creeping into the public model.
“There’s no boundary on the creep that can happen once we let these companies into our campuses,” they said.
Hurley said classes are taught by university faculty and instructors who are approved by the university partner.
“Many do teach the same course for the university,” he said. “They do this in small classes and offer additional time and individualized support to students so they can be prepared to enter the university in second year.”
In addition, he said academic standards are maintained “through an extensive course moderation process,” which is overseen by the relevant university department and reviewed by governance committees.
Still, faculty have concerns about the quality of education Navitas would provide. For example, Jacobs said the first-year biology course at U of G is taught by three instructors and 15 teaching assistants. “There’s no way that Navitas can do that,” they said.
In contrast, Sheldrick said it’s advantageous to international students because Navitas focuses solely on the first-year curriculum, and provides supports for them as they transfer to the partner university.
“We struggle with that sort of thing. We do well supporting our students, but international students have a diverse range of needs,” such as academic counselling, understanding rules around dropping courses, and understanding academic misconduct, Sheldrick said.
“We don't have the resources necessarily to invest in bringing everyone up to speed,” he said. “So Navitas really tries to emphasize preparatory work, while covering that first year of curriculum so that students can move into second year and be successful.”
U of G faculty are not the only ones who’ve shown concern, though.
At least one Canadian institution walked away from potential Navitas partnerships.
TMU's student newspaper reported that at Western University, for example, faculty voted 95 per cent in opposition.
The U of G union said faculty are worried they won’t have much say in the final decision.
Sheldrick said the decision to move forward with a contract will be left to the school's Board of Governors, which has only three faculty members. The Senate would then get to vote on the academic details of that contract.
He said they plan on having more conversations with the campus community in the coming weeks, including a town hall on internationalization.
It has yet to be determined which programs at the U of G would have pathways through Navitas, but Sheldrick said the programs would likely take place on the U of G campus.
If they move quickly, Sheldrick said there is a chance the first Navitas cohort would begin in fall of 2024. But more likely they’re looking at the fall or summer semester of 2025.
