A number of influential private citizens in Quebec have signed an open letter backing McGill university's plan to raise tuition fees for its MBA programme.

The forty signatories say the program is one of the best in the world, and it deserves to be able to raise more money by raising its tuition to $30,000 per year.

It notes that the program is the only one in Quebec to make the Financial Times’s annual Top 100 school ranking.

Former PQ premier Lucien Bouchard, financier Stephen Jarislowsky and Power Corporation head André Desmarais are among those who lent their name to the letter.

It comes amid a brewing dispute between the university and the province's education minister, Michelle Courchesne.

McGill's Desautels school of Management wants to raise tuition for Quebec students to increase self-financing and better fund its programmes.

Courchesne doesn’t agree and has threatened to withdraw $28,000 in funding annually for each student enrolled in the programme.

An actual MBA degree costs about $22,000 per student, per year. Quebec residents who enrol in the program pay only a fraction of that, and the government subsidizes the rest.