[Out of Towner]

Legislative measures to curtal the level of foreign student enrollment in Canada was short sighted. Education is one of the more socially desirable sectors an economy can have. It's environmentally clean, provides good jobs, and look at the kind of infrastructure it provides. You get well designed and visually attractive buildings. Unlike some other industries, the number of new build junkers in the education sector of the economy are few and far between. This is the kind of development that should be encouraged rather than discouraged.

 

[ChazYEG]

Legislative measures to curtal the level of foreign student enrollment in Canada was short sighted. Education is one of the more socially desirable sectors an economy can have. It's environmentally clean, provides good jobs, and look at the kind of infrastructure it provides. You get well designed and visually attractive buildings. Unlike some other industries, the number of new build junkers in the education sector of the economy are few and far between. This is the kind of development that should be encouraged rather than discouraged.

It is a two edged sword, unfortunately. Most international students were being funneled through to less than reputable colleges, on top of that, a lot of these students were bringing in their spouses and kids and putting a lot of strain in the job market and public services. I do believe immigration, and education, are the biggest pathways to Canadian long-term success, but we need to go back to the drawing board and have an actual plan to sustain that growth in a way that benefits the immigrants AND the country, and I feel like that is what is behind this reduction.

 

[Mesopotamia]

Legislative measures to curtal the level of foreign student enrollment in Canada was short sighted. Education is one of the more socially desirable sectors an economy can have. It's environmentally clean, provides good jobs, and look at the kind of infrastructure it provides. You get well designed and visually attractive buildings. Unlike some other industries, the number of new build junkers in the education sector of the economy are few and far between. This is the kind of development that should be encouraged rather than discouraged.

Curtailment of foreign students was targeted towards those gaming the system and enrolling in strip mall colleges to work low wage jobs, not research university students.

 

[Out of Towner]

It is a two edged sword, unfortunately. Most international students were being funneled through to less than reputable colleges, on top of that, a lot of these students were bringing in their spouses and kids and putting a lot of strain in the job market and public services. I do believe immigration, and education, are the biggest pathways to Canadian long-term success, but we need to go back to the drawing board and have an actual plan to sustain that growth in a way that benefits the immigrants AND the country, and I feel like that is what is behind this reduction.

I thought the foreign student policy changed because red necks vote and foreign students don't.

 

[constance_chlore]

Curtailment of foreign students was targeted towards those gaming the system and enrolling in strip mall colleges to work low wage jobs, not research university students.

Targeted towards, yes, although the precision leaves something to be desired.

 

[ChazYEG]

I thought the foreign student policy changed because red necks vote and foreign students don't.

Considering that the government that just changed the policy didn't really benefit from "redneck" voting, your attempt at sarcasm doesn't make sense and once again falls flat.

 

[inclusion]

Curtailment of foreign students was targeted towards those gaming the system and enrolling in strip mall colleges to work low wage jobs, not research university students.

Unfortunately, curtailment is also impacting other institutions, including the U of A, MacEwan, and NAIT. NAIT has already announced cutbacks to certain programs in particular. I've heard from more than a few people that securing part-time lecturing gigs at these institutions has declined significantly. Out of Towner is correct to say that advanced education is a boon to our economy across multiple sectors. I think it will recover eventually once they settle on a new program and policies, but there is definitely short-term pain.

 

[Out of Towner]

Considering that the government that just changed the policy didn't really benefit from "redneck" voting, your attempt at sarcasm doesn't make sense and once again falls flat.

Personal experiences shape personal opinions and I can say without hesitation that I never saw a foreign student, or an international student as you more aptly use to describe, gaming the system. There are exceptions to every rule but what I saw back when I attended university was international students who had their noses to the grindstone. Walk into any professional office today, particularly one in the medical field, and you'll see a non WASP name posted as one of the principals, so the system was working. Even if there are some that have recently come and are working on the side, they're doing low paying service work that nobody else wants to do and they're still paying tuition to the strip mall college to help keep the doors open.

 

[ChazYEG]

Personal experiences shape personal opinions and I can say without hesitation that I never saw a foreign student, or an international student as you more aptly use to describe, gaming the system. There are exceptions to every rule but what I saw back when I attended university was international students who had their noses to the grindstone. Walk into any professional office today, particularly one in the medical field, and you'll see a non WASP name posted as one of the principals, so the system was working. Even if there are some that have recently come and are working on the side, they're doing low paying service work that nobody else wants to do and they're still paying tuition to the strip mall college to help keep the doors open.

The ones that "game the system" aren't usually the ones going to universities, in general. They are usually, as someone said, at the strip mall colleges, although even good, reputable colleges and technical institutions have suffered with this.
The issue is that if it were just the students themselves, it would be fine, but I have seen too many instances of people coming to study and bringing their spouses and kids as well, which was another way to game the system based on the Express Entry program rules (the main immigration program in Canada). These spouses would come here with open work permits, kids would have access to everything they should (which is the right thing to do once they're here, but they shouldn't be, in the first place). This flooded the job and housing market.
I immigrated through a different program, focused on direct attraction of skilled workers, but while I was in the process of immigrating I was in contact with a huge assortment of immigration consultants that would use the "college-work permit loophole" to market their services.
I am not against immigration (it would be incredibly hypocritical) and I believe it is the path for sustained growth, diversification and cultural enrichment of the country. But it needed to be slowed down and reworked. We need to focus on attracting people at a pace in which we can develop our infrastructure and social security to keep up, instead of flooding the country with heaps of immigrants that come here looking for a better life just be thrown in a completely saturated job market, overcharged tuitions and increasingly high cost of living.

 

[constance_chlore]

I do think the international student numbers from 2022-2024 were not healthy and couldn't be sustained. It wasn't as apparent here in Edmonton or in Montreal, but when I spent a month in Sault Ste. Marie in 2024, I had the impression that about 50% of the Algoma students were international, mostly from one of a couple countries. (To be clear, my own family is from one of those countries.) This has to be put into the context of the steady disinvestment in post-secondary education in Canada over the last couple of decades. For universities and colleges, especially small ones, taking international students was a clear winning strategy. For the students, it seemed like a good idea—clearly, many of them were hoping to get a foothold toward permanent residency. But that dream has faded, and in the meantime many had to pay huge fees to agents and work very, very hard to make ends meet after arrival, often in exploitative jobs.

Changes needed to be made, but they changes we got were sudden and careless. A lot of people have the cynical impression that most of the new arrivals weren't actually interested in the degrees they were enrolled in, which is certainly true in some cases, but we did actually attract a lot of passionate, hard-working people who Canada should be trying to retain. The trouble is that we don't have the capacity to do those evaluations en masse, and even if we did public opinion might not care.

 

[ChazYEG]

It wasn't as apparent here in Edmonton or in Montreal

I took a couple of courses at Norquest in 2023 and my experience correlates a lot with your perception of what was happening in Sault Ste. Marie. My experience with the U of A and McEwan was completely different, both in terms of the amount of international students and their dedication and commitment to the programs.

 

[inclusion]

Individual institutions still had to accept on a case by case basis. The difference in the make up of students at any institution was simply who they chose to accept / not accept. U of A and MacEwan (certain programs like Nursing are extremely difficult these days) are tougher to get into than Norquest, for example. Strip mall colleges are even easier to get into. However, curtailment has had impact across the board.

 

[archited]

~105,000 immigrants came to Canada as refugees from the Ukraine war; Alberta received the second most of Provinces (behind Ontario) and around 9,000 settled in the Edmonton area. Edmonton already had a substantial Ukrainian population so the newbies by all accounts were generally warmly welcomed. Not to conflate general immigrant population with those classified as international students but the numbers had an effect on immigration sustainability generally. I suspect that as the numbers settle out and new policy is appropriated the schools -- NAIT, MacU, NorQuest, and U of A in particular -- will see numbers normalized. I love reading the specific stories of immigrants gaining an education and then opting to stay on in their new Country as eager citizens.

 

[johnnyboy]

From the Globe & Mail this past week

 

[David A]

From the Globe & Mail this past week

Our governments were eager to hand off partial funding our universities and colleges basically to foreign students, who could be charged more to and make up for the shortfall. Well I suppose it seemed like a good idea at the time to all of them, until the unintended consequences happened.

Of course the educational institutions expanded the number of spots for these more profitable students, much like a business would react by increasing supply. Unfortunately our housing supply was already very constrained, but educational institutions generally had no responsibility for and so did not care about that. Also some foreign students were more interested in using the educational route opened up to get jobs and become permanent residents than to study.

So now we have reduced funding for universities and colleges, a government that has been embarrassed and less support for immigration. Gee that worked well. Perhaps well intended, but badly implemented public policy.