[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.

 

[Out of Towner]

It's crazy to conflate international student enrollment with the cost of rent. The size of the variable in a quantitative relationship between the two in econometric modeling has to be small. If it isn't then the new MacEwan business building should be shelved. Perhaps even knock down some of the building at MacEwan so that the cost of rent comes down.

 

[David A]

It probably seemed crazy too those people who thought bringing in more international students was the solution to several problems with no downsides, but people can and did arrive faster than accommodation was built.

Unfortunately those making public policy did not understand economics or consequences. It was the increase in marginal demand that had an effect on price/rent for a relatively inelastic supply of accommodation.

 

[Out of Towner]

It probably seemed crazy too those people who thought bringing in more international students was the solution to several problems with no downsides, but people can and did arrive faster than accommodation was built.

Unfortunately those making public policy did not understand economics or consequences. It was the increase in marginal demand that had an effect on price/rent for a relatively inelastic supply of accommodation.

Interest rates and the regulatory environment have more of an impact on the cost and supply of accommodation than the marginal increase in demand from international students imho. It's unlikely that Edmonton will ever become a "college town" but there is an opportunity to develop a niche industry that can contribute to the urbanization of downtown Edmonton that many on this forum apparently desire.

 

[ChazYEG]

It's crazy to conflate international student enrollment with the cost of rent. The size of the variable in a quantitative relationship between the two in econometric modeling has to be small. If it isn't then the new MacEwan business building should be shelved. Perhaps even knock down some of the building at MacEwan so that the cost of rent comes down.

It is not small. The temporary resident population reached a peak of almost 10% of the population at one point (and then down to around 7%). It is not only the international students, it's their kids and spouses (and other family members in some cases).
Larger, more repurable Universities like McEwan and the U of A are not going to be the ones to suffer from the cut-backs, as these never based their whole existence around the immigration industry that grew from the free-for-all student visas. The dozens of strip mall colleges are the ones that will have to readjust their entire model.
Edmonton, in particular, probably won't see as drastic changes as Toronto or Vancouver, as we don't have as many of these colleges.

 

[Out of Towner]

Let's be realistic. Rent in Edmonton has not increased because of international student enrollment at dozens of strip mall colleges. That kind of rhetoric isn't only silly and unwelcome, it's dangerous. The reality is, scale is needed for buildings like MacEwan's business building to be constructed. In other words, you're not constructing that building for a couple hundred students. You need lots of students for that building to make economic sense.

Read the article just posted by johnnyboy. Academic institutions are having difficulty filling the hole in their operating budgets left by the decline in international student enrollments. It's not hard to assume that the higher tuition fees paid by international students acted as a subsidy to Canadian students and now the revenue shortfall being experienced by some institutions will need to be picked up by Canadian students or their parents. Taxpayers could possibly end up making up for the shortfall. One thing that is clear, lay-offs and scaling down programs is not conducive to construction of new building.

 

[ChazYEG]

Let's be realistic. Rent in Edmonton has not increased because of international student enrollment at dozens of strip mall colleges. That kind of rhetoric isn't only silly and unwelcome, it's dangerous. The reality is, scale is needed for buildings like MacEwan's business building to be constructed. In other words, you're not constructing that building for a couple hundred students. You need lots of students for that building to make economic sense.

Read the article just posted by johnnyboy. Academic institutions are having difficulty filling the hole in their operating budgets left by the decline in international student enrollments. It's not hard to assume that the higher tuition fees paid by international students acted as a subsidy to Canadian students and now the revenue shortfall being experienced by some institutions will need to be picked up by Canadian students or their parents. Taxpayers could possibly end up making up for the shortfall. One thing that is clear, lay-offs and scaling down programs is not conducive to construction of new building.

Again, larger, reputable institutions are not suffering from the effects of these cut-backs nearly enough for this argument to make sense. These institutions' main sources of funding are endowment funds or provincial government transfers, not tuition.

Additionally, as me, and others here have pointed out, Edmonton is an outlier in the sense that it didn't feel the impacts of the poorly thought escalation of temporary resident numbers, but I'm cities like Vancouver and Toronto (and others in southern Ontario and the Lower Mainland) this has a substantial impact, and the government cannot create specific immigration and visa approval rules for different cities.

No one here is saying that we shouldn't have those international students, but the growth was too fast and infrastructure, not just housing, didn't keep up with it. It needs to be brought down to a point in which we can sustain the growth while maintaining affordability, job creation and quality infrastructure for everyone, including those coming here.

 

[Out of Towner]

Again, larger, reputable institutions are not suffering from the effects of these cut-backs nearly enough for this argument to make sense. These institutions' main sources of funding are endowment funds or provincial government transfers, not tuition.

Additionally, as me, and others here have pointed out, Edmonton is an outlier in the sense that it didn't feel the impacts of the poorly thought escalation of temporary resident numbers, but I'm cities like Vancouver and Toronto (and others in southern Ontario and the Lower Mainland) this has a substantial impact, and the government cannot create specific immigration and visa approval rules for different cities.

No one here is saying that we shouldn't have those international students, but the growth was too fast and infrastructure, not just housing, didn't keep up with it. It needs to be brought down to a point in which we can sustain the growth while maintaining affordability, job creation and quality infrastructure for everyone, including those coming here.

Don't take my word for it. Read the testimonials made by the administrators of academic institutions in the article posted by johnnyboy. They say they have revenue shortfalls because of smaller enrollments by international students. As "inclusion" pointed out earlier, universities have enrollment quotas for many programs and a student from Victoria studying at UBC is no different than a student from Hong Kong studying at UBC. They're both going to have residency in Vancouver and drive up the price of rent in Vancouver according to your theory. The Hong Kong student is a more valuable student to UBC though because he's paying a bigger tuition fee than the guy from Victoria. So if the student from Victoria doesn't have marks that are good enough to gain entrance into a program, he's going to be the first one to complain about international students, and it's something you hear from red necks all the time.