MY TAKE
INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS: THEY’RE HERE. NOW WHAT?
International students were viewed until very recently as “ideal immigrants” accumulating professional and personal experiences in Canada, aka “Canadian experience”. Image credit: NEWS CANADA.
By SHAGORIKA EASWAR
Large numbers of students are not showing up for the classes they supposedly came to Canada for. Routinely.
Leading to a lot of noise in the press about student “no-shows” in recent weeks.
There is much handwringing at various levels of government at how we got to this point and pointing of fingers at who let it happen.
International students were viewed until very recently as “ideal immigrants” accumulating professional and personal experiences in Canada, aka “Canadian experience”.
Sean Fraser, the former minister of immigration, was looking to international students to help address Canada’s labour shortage.
The number of international students in Canada ballooned from 637,855 in 2019 to over 800,00 in 2022. And Ottawa forecasts 1.4 million international student applications a year by 2027, according to some reports.
However, the same international students are being held responsible for the sorry state of many things including lack of affordable housing and access to healthcare.
Various corrective measures are being suggested. Ideas are flying fast and furious.
The cap on the number of hours students can work was lifted.
For 2024, a single applicant will need to show they have $20,635 in addition to their first year of tuition and travel costs.
Recently, Immigration minister Marc Miller announced an intake cap on international student permit applications “to stabilize new growth for a period of two years”. For 2024, the cap is expected to result in approximately 360,000 approved study permits, a decrease of 35 per cent from 2023. Leading to opposition from universities and public colleges that say the action should be directed at substandard colleges, not legitimate designated learning institutions or DLIs.
But this is nothing new. Constant changes leave one wondering if we view international students as a wild beast that we are struggling to bring under control so as to extract maximum benefit.
Other ideas include cracking down on international student no shows, or those who gain admission to educational institutions in Canada, but don’t attend classes.
A Statistics Canada report revealed that nearly 19 per cent of international students – mainly with study permits for private colleges – weren’t actually enrolled anywhere.
According to The Canadian Experience Disconnect: Immigrant Selection, Economic Settlement, and Hiring, an impact paper for the Conference Board of Canada by Yilmaz Ergun Dinç, whether these education and training programs deliver the expected Canadian experience benefits is uncertain. “International students, for instance, are often paying for programs with limited employment prospects, with significant uncertainty on transitioning to permanent residency.”
Measures are being put in place to weed out fraudulent student applications and also tighten scrutiny of hole-in-the-wall educational institutions that fill their coffers with applicants and then have a staggering number of no-shows. ‘Collect the tuition fees and on to the next batch’ would appear to be the business model of places that show thousands more students on their rolls than they have physical room for.
Ontario is home to seven of the 10 schools flagged as having the highest rates of noncompliance when it comes to international students.
These are mainly at private colleges, but also include publicly-funded universities, where no-shows ranged from 33 per cent to 95 per cent.
Many of the international students I interact with at restaurants or grocery stores claim to be studying “project management”. Some are happy to share details of where and the courses, etc., though I have to confess I haven’t heard of the places they are enrolled at. Others mumble and look away, and I feel bad for making them uncomfortable.
How many of these are genuine students and how many are here only to work? If a large number of them are not, in fact, gaining the much valued “Canadian experience” then how are they hoping to transition to PR? And what does that mean for Canada?
I believe this is a bifocal issue. We need to see the reasons right in front of our eyes and also examine ones that appear at a distance – at the same time. Because while there’s no denying that some are scamming the system, not every international student is. Many are victims of fraud themselves, promised the great Canadian learning experience by unscrupulous agents. Driven by dreams of a new life in a new country, and with the weight of parental expectations upon their young shoulders, they land in cities across Canada only to discover that the “college” they enrolled in is anything but.
These are desperate people in dire straits. They are homesick, lonely, frightened and often hungry.
Grant’s Desi Achiever Sanchari Sen-Rai, founder of ECC Hive, which has placed 40,000-plus students at 70 institutions, has a close-up view of the situation. She acknowledges that no-shows are an issue.
“It sounds harsh, but some kids want to play the victim. All the info was available to them, they knew what they were signing up for, but they claim they have to drive an Uber or work long hours instead of attending class. It’s difficult to help those.”
But she also shares the story of a genuine student who was struggling. The college they had placed her at called about her low attendance. An ECC Hive counsellor called her and learnt that the girl was terribly homesick. The counsellor connected her with the dabbawali (South Asian food delivery service) she herself had used and also put her in touch with other students. The student is thriving at school now.
We need to look at international students as individuals, not just as numbers that can be used, manipulated and then cast aside. Or else we open ourselves up to bringing in some who will do the same to us.
We need to remember that many high achievers in our community came to Canada as international students.