Language data in Quebec paints a nuanced picture.

The number of people in the province who speak French is on the rise, according to Canadian census data.

More native-English speakers also use French at work or school, and 67 percent of them are bilingual, which is slightly higher than in past years.

But at the same time, the percentage of Quebec residents who speak French at home has dropped slightly, to about 78 percent in 2021, from 82 percent in 2001.

Besides the tuition increase, which starts this fall, next year Quebec will require that 80 percent of out-of-province students at McGill and Concordia reach intermediate French proficiency by the time they graduate.

McGill University is considered a crown jewel in Canada’s higher education system and viewed by many American students as an alternative to far more expensive Ivy League institutions in the United States.

One of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Canada, it is internationally known for pioneering advances in artificial intelligence and health care research.

Not far away in Montreal is Concordia University, which has a highly regarded cinema studies program and is also a destination for design and communication students.

Under the new tuition policy, students bound for McGill or Concordia from outside Quebec will pay roughly 12,000 Canadian dollars a year.

International students, who have always paid a premium, will pay a minimum annual tuition of 20,000 Canadian dollars, or about $15,000.

Quebec residents pay about 3,500 dollars per year, the lowest undergrad tuition in the country.

The universities have offered grants to nonresident students to help offset the cost of tuition, but the number of out-of-province and international students nevertheless fell at the start of the academic year, according to McGill and Concordia.

“This will degrade our universities and will degrade Montreal; not only its economy, but its reputation as a student city and as a city open for business,” said Daanish Khan, a political science student at McGill who has led a group opposing the policy.

The tuition policy was a shock to the two universities, which have filed separate lawsuits asking a Quebec superior court judge to toss out the changes, arguing that the government had not made a strong enough case for why the plan was necessary.

The universities’ administrations accuse Quebec’s government of arbitrarily punishing their students and imposing a financial burden on them after years of chronic provincial underfunding.

The number of English-speaking students attending Quebec universities has barely increased in the past decade, rising by roughly 2 percent, to about 103,000 last year, according to the province’s higher-education ministry.

By comparison, there were 208,000 French-language students studying in Quebec last year.

The two universities estimate that the tuition increases will result in about 100 million Canadian dollars in losses a year because of an anticipated drop in English-speaking students, potentially leading to job cuts.

The policy has also rattled faculty, who fear the changes will become a stain on the universities’ reputations and make it harder to attract the best teaching and research talent.