Still, there's no arguing that's the effect.

Most of those who come to Quebec to study are English-speaking, as are most of those who leave Quebec to study elsewhere. So any policy that discriminates against out-of-province students, or invites retaliation by other provinces, will fall disproportionately upon les anglais.

What is more, since the revenue gain from any increase in fees does not accrue to the universities, but rather goes into provincial coffers, the policy hits predominantly English-speaking universities like McGill just as hard. So far as higher fees discourage students from other provinces from coming to Quebec, these institutions face declining enrollment. And so far as students from other parts are willing to pay the 75 per cent tariff on outsiders, they are merely subsidizing their fellow students from Quebec.

At any rate, the policy is quite explicitly intended to discriminate against Canadians from other provinces -- to treat them, in effect, as if they were from another country. Whether or not this is in violation of the Charter of Rights, as the McGill students society contends in a case now before the Quebec Superior Court, it plainly violates any notion of common citizenship.

Yet the weird thing is that, within the context of how universities are funded in Canada today, Quebec's decision appears quite logical. Students typically pay less than a quarter of the cost of their education; in Quebec, the proportion is 12 per cent. When a student travels from one province to another, therefore, he or she is a net drain on the host province's treasury.

And with the lowest tuition fees in the country, Quebec risked becoming a magnet for students from other provinces. Even at the new, "discriminatory" fee of $2868 (versus $1668 for etudiants de souche), students from out of province would still pay no more than the average in the other nine provinces.

As I say, given the context, that seems logical. But that is only a statement of how illogical the context is. In what other area of economic life would we say the provider of a service "risked" attracting customers? Yet that is what has become of the Canadian university system, owing to the provinces' control over university funding. Since fees are held well below cost, universities depend for the bulk of their funding on provincial grants.

Naturally, these go only to provincially-based institutions.

In effect, the funding stops at the provincial border. The student who crosses the country to study brings with him only that small fraction of the cost of his education that he pays for out of his own pocket. So provinces have no incentive to improve their universities in order to compete for students from other provinces. They have every incentive, in fact, to discourage students from coming.

So long as every province kept tuition fees at roughly comparable levels, it was possible to maintain a sort of perverse equilibrium out of all this: what a province lost by attracting a student from other parts, it gained by driving out one of its own. But as tuition fees have begun to rise to replace cuts in government grants, they have also begun to diverge. It is not only Quebec that has followed this illogical system to its logical conclusion: British Columbia is also threatening to impose differential fees, unless other provinces agree to a tuition freeze.

But students should pay higher fees, for the same reason that that they should be free to choose any university in the country: to force universities to be more responsive to students' needs. Though much the biggest part of the cost of education to the student is simply the forgone income from not working, to the extent that higher tuition fees do pose a barrier to accessibility, that is better remedied by improving student assistance.

But so long as the funding stops at the border, the system will remain balkanized. In theory, the provinces could guarantee portability through some sort of reciprocal funding arrangement, a la medicare. But if that were likely, they would have done so already. It makes much more sense to give the job to the federal government -- to send funds directly to students, and thence to the university of their choice.

Someday we will realize that the market for universities is not provincial, but national -- if not international. And when we do, will it not occur to anyone that universities should properly be a federal responsibility?