Why is that a worry? Because students from out of province are a net loss to their hosts: they cost just as much to educate, but pay only that part of the cost that is made up in fees. Already Quebec has become the first province to impose higher fees on students from other provinces, to make up the difference. If other provinces follow, we risk creating a system in which students are discouraged from straying beyond their own province's borders, limiting choice, restricting competition and narrowing perspectives.

So it is heartening to report that at least one influential voice is calling on Ottawa to take the lead in framing a national approach to the problem - even national standards. That voice is the government of British Columbia.

Huh? B.C.? Are we talking about the same province? Aren't they threatening to become the second province to charge differential fees? And say, isn't this Clark government the same bunch that tried to impose a three-month residency requirement on welfare applicants, precisely to discourage new arrivals from other provinces? Aren't they usually the loudest advocates of provincial rights? Since when does B.C. favour national standards in anything?

Yet there, on the front page of the Globe and Mail, was Andrew Petter, B.C.'s minister of Advanced Education, openly fretting at the emergence of a balkanized national university system. Naturally, it's all Ottawa's fault: had they not cut transfers for higher education, other provinces would not have been forced to raise fees, and B.C., where fees are frozen for three years, would not live in fear of a student "invasion." But still: "I would have thought the federal government has a strong interest in maintaining interprovincial mobility of students. I think that's a legitimate national concern." A legitimate national concern. In an area of exclusive provincial responsibility. While you're still reeling from that, let me hasten to assure you that Petter doesn't really mean it. There is not the remotest prospect of the federal government doing a thing to prevent the provinces from imposing differential fees. It's one thing to punish B.C. for restricting welfare eligibility, as the feds did, successfully. But tuition fees - erm, that would mean tangling with Quebec, wouldn't it?

So even though the federal government partially underwrites the system, to the tune of a couple of billion dollars per year, the provinces will be free to impose whatever barriers they like. Taxpayers in other provinces will subsidize Quebec for the privilege of having their sons and daughters treated like foreigners. As will soon be the case in B.C., as well. Petter's belated discovery of a "legitimate national concern" is strictly for public relations purposes, to make B.C.'s imminent move to differential fees look like the unavoidable result of federal negligence, and not the parochial-minded idiocy that it is.

But stay with Petter for a moment. Assume he really is interested in a national solution. There are at least six different ways of addressing B.C.'s concerns that do not involve differential fees. One, B.C. could raise its fees.

That would be progressive public policy, given that university students are drawn overwhelmingly from the richest fifth of the population: the less the subsidy, the less the average taxpayer must pay to educate his boss's kids.

But perhaps the Clark government is unwilling to break an election promise.

Two, Ontario and other high-fee provinces could lower theirs. Ixnay: higher fees are already forcing universities to compete for students as never before - a most welcome development. So rule out three - the provinces agree to some sort of standard national fee schedule - and four, a federally imposed regime. The last thing we need is a national university cartel.

There remain two possible solutions that would preserve both provincial autonomy and interprovincial mobility. The provinces could agree to reimburse each other for the costs of educating those students who travel outside their borders, in the same way that they now guarantee the portability of medicare. But this is easier said than done: high-spending, low-fee provinces would want to be reimbursed for the full amount of the subsidy; low-spending, high-fee provinces would want to pay only as much as their own costs would suggest was reasonable.

So that leaves just one solution. Make the financing of post-secondary education a federal responsibility. Send each student a cheque, drawn on the federal account, in an amount equal to the average cost of tuition nationwide, and payable to the institution of their choice - wherever that might be. Let the funding follow the student, let provinces and schools compete vigorously to attract them, and hang the jurisdictional niceties.

After all, its "a legitimate national concern." We can take B.C.'s word for it.