Simon Fraser University has put the brakes on a controversial deal with an Australian company to establish a private for-profit college on campus for international students.

The proposed partnership with IBT Education Limited unleashed a storm of protest from students and faculty who were concerned the arrangement would compromise academic standards.

“There are many ways in which academic interests could conflict with profit motives,” warned Slava Senyshyn, president of SFU’s faculty association in a letter to the university’s president. “A profit-driven enterprise to increase recruitment of international students could ... detract attention from the need for sincere internal efforts to address what are already serious retention issues for domestic and international students alike.”

Under the proposed deal, SFU would provide space on campus for IBT to establish Fraser International College, an independent institution affiliated to the university offering pre-university and first-year university transfer courses. IBT would hire its own staff and recruit international students who would pay about $15,000 a year in tuition. In return, SFU would receive about a third of the tuition income and graduates of the college who met the minimum admission requirements would be guaranteed a place in an SFU program.

University officials say they are withdrawing the proposal, for now. However, SFU insists the partnership with IBTwould benefit the university by bringing more diversity to the student body and generating additional revenue. Officials also point out that IBT has established 13 private college partnerships with 11 universities in Australia, one in England and one in Kenya.

But opponents of the plan point to serious problems that have emerged in countries like Australia where universities have come to rely on international students to make up for shortfalls in government funding.

“Australia’s universities are facing serious criticisms that they’ve cut corners and compromised academic standards to attract international students,” said CAUT associate executive director David Robinson.

He said a government-financed study released in 2004 concluded that in aggressively pursuing foreign students, Australia’s universities are being “forced to raise their bell curve to achieve some passing grades or else lower their minimum expectations.”