Quebec education minister Line Beauchamp has confirmed that her government will go ahead with penalties against McGill for hiking tuition fees for its Masters of Business Administration program by almost 1,500 per cent last September.

As the Bulletin reported in January, McGill started charging students in its MBA program $29,500 a year in tuition — from about $2,000 — claiming it could no longer afford to subsidize the program and compete internationally in the absence of adequate government funding.

McGill reportedly said it planned another $3,000 increase for the next cohort.

Beauchamp is not buying it, ar­guing that other Quebec universities offer excellent MBA programs with the flat-tuition model. She has not confirmed the financial penalty that McGill will face. Her predecessor, Michelle Courchesne, who left the education portfolio in a cabinet shuffle last summer, wanted to reduce McGill’s funding by an amount equal to the tuition increase.

In an interview with Le Devoir on Feb. 25, Beauchamp confirmed that her ministry had taken an exceptional measure last November in asking for a list of students registered in McGill’s MBA program.

“We needed to take account of foreign students and out-of-province students, and that analysis is practically finished. I will soon be able to announce the amount of the pen­alty to be imposed on McGill,” Beauchamp said.

“The government is attempting to avoid the creation of a two-tiered system for MBA programs in Quebec,” said James Turk, CAUT executive director. “Quebec students’ access to any program has to be based on merit, and not family income, whether they wish to study at Concordia, Laval, Montreal, or McGill or another Quebec university.”