The Province of Quebec has an admirable record in providing public higher education to Québécois and to the people of the world. Since the great reforms of the 1960s, Quebec's people have benefited from a network of public institutions in nearly every corner of the province.

Quebec is a big place, and this costly endeavour required the commitment of successive government's, federal and provincial. Federal transfers supported a significant part of Quebec's policy, but Quebec taxpayers have also recognized the importance of this immense project.

Students from all parts of Canada and much of the world know the Quebec system, value it, and maintain cultural and business ties with that province because of their experience in its universities. Graduates who stay in Quebec have been crucially important in the modernization of its social and economic life, and the worlds of literature and art in Quebec are the envy of all.

This achievement is at risk. At the end of November the Quebec government announced its decision to impose differential fees on Canadian students coming to Quebec from outside that province (see story on pages 6 & 7).

This is Quebec's third step away from a commitment to accessible, public higher education. The first was a decision some years ago to charge higher fees to foreign students. In this, of course, it was no different from all the provinces, and we regret all of those decisions.

Then Quebec decided its students would not normally receive student aid if they took their education outside the province. None of these steps supports accessibility or mobility. Yet in 1993, the Council of Ministers of Education (CMEC) explicitly promised that all the provinces would do more -- not less -- for mobility. Quebec isn't the only province that has backed away from the 1993 promise, but that is all the more reason to worry about this latest turn of events.

In Quebec, as elsewhere, both levels of government worked until recently to keep the system accessible to students from Canada and the world.

In Quebec, "access" has been achieved on a large geographical scale. Universities and CEGEPs grew up far from Québec city and Montréal. Universities, meanwhile, received important financial assistance to keep tuition fees at reasonable levels. René Lévesque used to say he wanted "the little people" to be able to attend college and university, and that meant low tuition fees.

The latest Quebec policy is an attack on the idea of access to higher education in that province. The idea of differential fees offends the ancient principle that universities -- and knowledge itself -- are without borders. Bernard Shapiro rightly notes that the Quebec policy tries to ignore the explosion of knowledge in our time (see commentary on page 6).

But the policy is a surprise in quite another sense. It will introduce a new "inefficiency" into post-secondary education. All provinces will have to decide whether to introduce differential fees. Bureaucracy will grow in order to administer that new world, student flows will surely decline, and able students may no longer go to the universities best suited to them.

François Tavenas pushes the question further in his comments (see story on page 7). He notes that professor/student ratios are higher in Quebec than elsewhere. The imposition of differential fees won't produce the funds required to bring that ratio down. This leaves the possibility that even with the new differential fees, the government must eventually allow tuition fees to float free. The government has said it will continue to regulate fees, all the while cutting provincial grants (and this will sound familiar in nearly every province). It can't hold this line for long.

Somewhere in Hans Christian Andersen there's the story of the goose that laid golden eggs. We all know what happened to that goose. It's at least possible that Quebec is making the same error the greedy king made in the fairy tale.

Our Quebec colleagues, the FQPPU, have come out firmly against the new policy. The CAUT has a long-standing policy opposing differential fees. It will take a good deal of reasoning and politics to change the Quebec government's views, and that work should begin now.