Canada’s decision to welcome thousands of Syrian refugees “stands out as an important symbol” of the country’s “openness and eagerness to attract newcomers,” says University of Toronto President Meric Gertler in an interview with Times Higher Education. Gertler highlights a number of significant steps Canada has taken to be open compared to the isolationist tendencies of Brexit and the Donald Trump presidential campaign. These include Canada’s efforts to attract 450,000 international students by 2022, its amendments to its citizenship process for international students, and its increased investment in research and scientific infrastructure. “Canada has certainly emerged as a place of stability, of openness, of inclusiveness,” says Gertler. “I think we’re doing many things right now that will position us as a stark alternative to things that are happening in other countries, including the UK and the US.”
Nova Scotia has launched two initiatives aiming to entice international student to stay, work and possibly immigrate after they graduate, in order to shore up the province’s ageing and shrinking workforce.
The University of Prince Edward Island is hosting “talking circles” to help international students gain confidence in their English language skills. The events, held every second Friday, are organized by the International Relations office and the English Academic Preparation program at the university. At each session, they focus on specific subjects so international students can understand English jargon.
International students at the University of Prince Edward Island will soon have additional support to help them to stay in the province, reports CBC. UPEI has reportedly increased its support to international students over the past year-and-a-half in particular, and has been working with the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency and PEI to support students with language training and adapting to life in Canada. ACOA is providing $493,631 under its Business Development Program and PEI is providing $53K through the Department of Workforce and Advanced Learning. International students reportedly make up 22% of UPEI’s full-time student population, a figure that CBC states has been growing steadily in recent years. “This important diversity adds so much in terms of cultural exchange and learnings among all of our students,” said UPEI President Alaa Abd-El-Aziz.
A new pilot program announced by the Nova Scotia Government to keep international students in the province is a “very encouraging” step, yet it does not fully address the barriers most commonly faced by these students, says the Canadian Federation of Students for Nova Scotia. The government pilot in question aims to support 50 international students who are completing their final year of PSE in “priority areas” such as health care, computer engineering, and ocean sciences. These supports includes career mentoring, access to employment-related events, and workshops. Yet the CFS-NS says that these efforts do not address the issues of “differential fees” paid by international students, and access to medical services insurance coverage. “What we really need is broader action that will help international students studying in Nova Scotia across the board,” said CFS-NS Chairperson Charlotte Kiddell.
Quebec has provided $1.6M to Montreal International to implement a program encouraging more international students to stay in the province after graduation, reports La Presse. The program will specifically target graduates trained for work in in-demand sectors, although it will still be open to students from all programs. Montreal International CEO Hubert Bolduc hopes that the program will increase the number of students remaining in the province after graduation from 3,000 to 9,000. Bolduc notes that of the 30,000 international students who currently study in Montreal, many do not stay due largely to language barriers, difficulty finding a job, and the burden of the immigration process.
MacEwan University is considering an increase to its tuition fees for international students in order to better support domestic students studying abroad, reports CBC. A draft proposal reportedly suggests that the school should implement a 10% increase in international student fees for fall 2017-18 and an additional 5% increase for fall of 2018-19. The Edmonton Journal adds that the proposed changes could result in the creation of $2.5K entrance bursaries or scholarships for as many as 230 students, and the same amount for up to 120 MacEwan students studying abroad. “Tuition is not a small dollar item anymore and so when you look at these models for tuition, you don’t want to be too high; we want to be accessible to students (and) at the same time, you don’t want to be too low,” said MacEwan Provost John Corlett.
“Lofty (yet unsubstantiated) claims of ‘high-quality teaching’ or graduates who ‘go on to start amazing careers in a variety of well-known companies’ don’t cut it for international prospects,” writes Megan Brenn-White for Inside Higher Ed. To this end, the author suggests that institutions with positive international rankings should focus on promoting awareness of their rankings or awards. For those with a less compelling ranking or awards record, the emphasis should be on testimonials from students and alumni. Finally, the author argues that institutions can be more concrete about their commitment to quality by promoting awareness of initiatives they are undertaking to enhance specific aspects of their institution.
Many students who have access to international experiences during higher education don’t realise their value until after they have graduated, according to a recent survey. It found that study abroad, overseas internships, language courses and intercultural exchanges are all overlooked by students as they studied. However, in the survey of more than 1,000 graduates, three-quarters said they felt it was the responsibility of their institutions to offer access to international opportunities.
In the absence of any data on Indian students studying abroad, the government has launched a registration module for them so they could be reached in case of emergency.
The past five years show a “national trend toward a steady rise in the number of overseas students arriving in Canada,” reports the Edmonton Journal. The article notes that Manitoba has nearly doubled the number of international students studying in the province since 2011-12, while Alberta has seen a 40% increase and Saskatchewan has seen a 24% increase over the same period. The article highlights how specific institutions in AB have promoted themselves to international students and how they benefit from growing international cohorts. “Internationalization is important because the world is becoming more globalized and it’s important that students and staff have the capabilities to work well with each other,” says NorQuest College Chair of Graduate Studies Ron Horton.
“The intrinsic value of developing a broad world view through international education is self-evident,” writes [CIEC Academic Member] Western University President Amit Chakma. The author highlights a number of strides the federal government has made to boost the role of international education in Canada, which include rebranding the country as an education destination, improving the Express Entry program, and renewing the country’s commitment to study abroad. Chakma also takes time to remind readers that in addition to the country’s ambitious targets, “what’s more important to consider is the philosophy behind the idea, along with the merits of pursuing such a policy more aggressively to better support the development of our future global citizens.” Chakma concludes with a discussion of the barriers currently faced by students looking to pursue study abroad and how institutions and governments might better address them.
A new study claims that 41% of surveyed students from outside the UK are less likely to study in Britain after the Brexit referendum, reports Times Higher Education, butCanada was found to be a popular alternative for international study. The students listed a number of concerns with the UK in light of the referendum that made it less attractive. When asked about alternative study destinations, The Independent reports that as many as 32% stated that they would choose Canada as an alternative study destination, followed by Germany, Australia, and the US. The Chronicle of Higher Education observes that the US could also see difficulties in international recruitment as a result of the upcoming American election, and notes that “Canada could be the biggest winner” when it comes to recruitment.
Employers in Ontario might be more willing to hire international students if they are confident about the support governments and universities might offer them, according to a new study by researchers at York University. Titled “International students as ideal immigrants: Ontario employers’ perspective,” the report notes that confusion around immigration and work regulations can be a significant barrier to employers when it comes to hiring international students and graduates. The report also found that while employers had a high level of confidence in international students’ hard skills, they were concerned about a lack of communication skills and extracurricular engagement. The report offers a series of recommendations that governments and institutions might follow to address these concerns and others.
A new survey shows that employability and career goals are major contributors to a student’s decision to study abroad, reports the ICEF Monitor. However, the survey also notes a growing openness toward other forms of education beyond university, and a willingness to remain in a home country if domestic programs improve. The report concludes that competition for attracting international students is continuing to grow worldwide, and warns stakeholders about the dangers of relying on “gut feelings” instead of reliable data when pursuing international enrolment strategies.
Mount Saint Vincent University has partnered with Venor in an effort to help international student graduates find employers and opportunities to start their careers in Nova Scotia. The partnership marks the latest step in the Nova Scotia Scholars Program, which provides personalized career plans that include career building, networking, work experience, and immigration support for participants. “The Mount is committed to assisting international students who choose to remain in the province,” said Paula Barry Mercer, Associate Vice President of Student Experience at MSVU. “Keeping more graduates in Nova Scotia is an important step in helping to ensure the future prosperity of our province.”
Ontario has announced that it will temporarily close its fast-track residency program for international students due to a backlog of thousands of applicants, reports Simona Chiose for the Globe and Mail. Chiose notes that the closure lends further evidence that Canada’s recent strategies around Express Entry have made immigration into the country more difficult for certain groups. The closure will specifically affect the provincial nominee program for master’s and doctoral grads who earned credentials from an Ontario university. The province is estimated to be currently working its way through 7,000 applicants, nearly half of whom are expected to be recent graduates.
Graduates of foreign medical schools often face a significant clash of cultures when they pursue two-year family medicine residencies in Canada, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Alberta and University of Calgary. The report notes that while Canada relies heavily on international medical graduates, many of these graduates may struggle with unfamiliar cultural experiences, such as being taught by female instructors, working with the mentally ill, and having difficulty with the nuances of English. “In some countries, males look after males and females look after females,” said Olga Szafran, associate research director in the University of Alberta’s family-medicine department and the study’s lead author, “but we can’t be selective in the kind of patients that our physicians end up treating.”
“Today, our graduates are competing with their peers all over the world for the jobs of tomorrow,” writes Christa Ovenell, director and principal of Fraser International College, and Canada’s students will need to thrive in a globalized workforce if they wish to remain relevant in a 21st-century economy. Instead of trying to provide massive numbers of domestic students with international experience via study abroad, Ovenell suggests that Canada should focus more on attracting international students to a greater number of Canadian institutions. Despite the growing number of international students studying in Canada, Ovenell concludes, “those international students are densely concentrated at only a handful of institutions, resulting in a deficit of experience for the vast majority of our domestic students.”
According to Amit Chakma, president of [CIEC Academic Member] Western University and chair of the federal government’s Advisory Panel on Canada’s International Education Strategy, the Canadian government has recently shown positive signs towards international students hoping to study in Canada. By reviewing the steps these students must take to achieve permanent residency, in addition to changes made to citizenship requirements, Canada aims to make it easier for these students to pursue an education and work in the country after graduating.
Georgian College and Lakehead University have partnered with the Simcoe County District School Board to recruit and support international students. The groups have signed a three-year Memorandum of Understanding that will guide collaborative efforts to attract international students and support their transition through the different phases of schooling. Lakehead’s Orillia Campus Principal Kim Fedderson says that this approach “creates a pathway for students to move from primary and secondary school, through to college and university… When we’re recruiting in China, India, Brazil, Malaysia, people are asking for that.”
While taking a sip of my masala chai with alu paratha, I am staring at these kids throwing colorful powder at each other, laughing and running in every direction. The city is calm, the sun is clear and the air is fresh. So much to see, so much to taste, so much to discover: Welcome to India.
Even after two years, some people still ask with stupefaction, why I left Canada for India to pursue my Master’s Degree and if I did not have universities in my own country. Most of the time I quickly answer that I came to India to specialize in agriculture economics and Indo-Canadian relations but that is just one part of the truth. The other part is that after my undergraduate program, I made the decision of offering myself the greatest gift: I went to study abroad. I chose myself for two years. A gift from yourself to yourself that changes your whole perception of life and its intrinsic value. Studying abroad leaves you by yourself with your knowledge, culture and values in the middle of a whole new world where the culture is different, the religions are different, the language and food habits are different, where everything is to discover. The real challenge is to find the strength to adapt in this new world without losing who you are.
After my studies in International Economics and Development at the University of Ottawa, I wanted to become an economist. Specifically, I wanted to become a development economist. The kind that can bring efficient economic solutions and alternatives based on a deep understanding of the social, cultural and historical background. After my third year of Bachelor’s Degree, I was selected by the Ontario/Maharashtra Goa Student Exchange Program to pursue the Student India Program in Symbiosis International University in Pune, India. I came back to Canada to finish my last year of undergraduate studies and started to prepare my application to conduct a Master’s Degree in India. After my graduation, I received the Commonwealth Scholarship Plan in collaboration with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations and the Department of Foreign Affairs of Canada, which gave me the opportunity to pursue the Master’s Degree in Economics at Hyderabad Central University in India.
It took me almost a year to plan and prepare what was going to be the biggest trip of my life, with myself as my only travel partner and my humility and curiosity as carrying luggage. To anyone thinking about pursuing a degree or a semester abroad, few steps can guide you:
1)Choose a country, read about its culture, history and social development. See if it peaks your curiosity to the point where you are determined to live and experince it by yourself.
2)Look for the different educational programs that are offered by the host country and if the diploma obtained abroad will be recognized by your home country or own institution. You can discuss with your teachers and determinethe added-value of this diploma to your career. Discuss with your parents and friends about your project, ask their opinion and determine the pros and cons.
3)Look for scholarships offered by the Provincial and Federal governments, such as the Department of Global Affairs Canada, NGOs, organizations for international studies, LOGIQ for students from Quebec, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Canada India Education Council, Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, Commonwealth Scholarship Plan, Ontario/Maharashtra Goa Student Exchange Program. Also, many Canadian universities are offering scholarships to students willing to complete a semester abroad.
4)Construct a budget of the expected expenditures and fees. Try to determine the total cost of this project, including flight tickets, visa fees, accommodations and living expenditures, fix a budget if you want to travel across the country. By preparing your project in advance, you can find many helpful ideas, you can ask for the flight tickets as birthday or graduation gift from your family and friends, save money from part-time work to achieve this specific goal, work with NGOs and seek out sponsorships. If there is no solution, it is because there was no problem at the beginning.
5)Make an appointment at a travel health clinic. The specialists will give you advice and preventions for the specific country you will travel to, discuss with your doctor about the different options to ensure your security abroad. For example, ask about the prevention of malaria, hepatitis, rabies, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis and if you should receive any specific vaccine before leaving.
6)Learn more about the culture, the university where you will study, the basic courtesies of the country, watch documentaries on the social challenges the country is facing, learn more about their history and language. The better your preparation, the easier your adaptation to this new environment will be.
7) Enjoy, learn, share and make a lot of friends.
I hope this article brings to you the fire required to conduct what I believe is the biggest trip of your life. You will face challenges, culture shocks and misunderstandings, but you need to look beyond that. You will discover a new culture, make life-long friends, learn a new language, you will see landscapes that you can normally only see in movies. The memories and friendships created will remain long after the completion of your studies. By the way, the picture was taken in Munnar, Kerala in December 2015. Yes, life as an international student is pretty boring as you can see 😉 Give it a try, you will be surprised!
PEI has announced that it will expand its mentorship program for recent graduates to include applications from international students, giving them better access to the PEI workforce. Skills PEI contributes up to 50% of wage costs for the first year of employment for postsecondary graduates who are enrolled in the mentorship program. “Hopefully they join the companies, help the company grow, and they will stay here on Prince Edward Island,” said Richard Brown, PEI’s Minister of Workforce and Advanced Learning, “the company grows, the economy grows, it’s good for Prince Edward Island.”
Over the past twenty years the recruitment of international students has become a key priority for many Canadian PSE institutions. Major schools have produced multi-year plans to help make themselves more international, and these plans often give priority to increasing the proportion of international students studying on their campuses. Major figures in higher ed have also warned that the recruitment of international students and the charging of higher tuition fees to this cohort can result in ethical concerns, and have called for enhanced federal guidelines to govern the enrolment of non-Canadian students in Canadian institutions.
We asked 1,400 StudentVu panelists what they thought about the growing presence of international students on campus, the domestic student-international student relationship, the proportion of international students to domestic students, and other related issues. Our panelists reported that they believed international students had a positive impact on their postsecondary experience; many also expressed support for a school population comprised of 20-40% international students, and voiced concerns about their schools’ treatment of international students.
Earlier this year, India’s Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani approved a proposal that will see an initial 10,000 new seats opened for foreign students at the country’s premier engineering institutes. This marks the first time that admission in the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has been opened to overseas students.
The proposal is clear that seats for foreign students will not come at the expense of Indian applicants. Rather, the aim is to add thousands of new seats across all IITs and to have overseas students pay a significant differential fee in the range of Rs 400,000-500,000 per year (US$6,000-US$7,500), as opposed to the Rs 90,000 annual tuition (US$1,350) required of Indian students.
For the the full article, please visit ICEF Monitor.
“International students are the best source of immigrants, in the sense that they’re educated, they’re young, they speak English or French, they know something of the country,” says Canada’s Immigration Minister John McCallum, “so we should be doing everything we can do to court them.” McCallum argues that Canada can greatly enhance the opportunities for international students to gain permanent residence by overhauling the current “Express Entry System,” a computerized program that allegedly prioritizes immigrants who are skilled workers and makes it difficult for many to gain permanent residence.
Canada has introduced legislation that is designed to make it easier for international students to gain citizenship after graduating. The legislation will reportedly repeal a number of changes made by the previous Conservative government under Bill C-24 in June 2015. Some of the new legislation’s most significant changes will be in reducing the period of physical residency required to apply for citizenship, allowing students to count time spent studying in Canada toward their residency requirement, and reviewing the Canadian Experience Class program.
Students who travel to Canada to get a world-class education “also bring a wide range of short- and long-term social, cultural and economic benefits,” writes BC Minister of Advanced Education Andrew Wilkinson. The article describes some of the very first international students who came to BC at the beginning of the 20th century, before discussing the benefits that today’s international students bring to Canada. Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of international students, says Wilkinson, is that they pay the full cost of PSE tuition and thus subsidize not only higher education, but K-12 programming for domestic students. Further, international students who stay in Canada after graduation have been shown to fulfill an important role in closing the country’s skills gap. For these reasons and more, Wilkinson concludes, “the benefits add up and are irrefutable whichever way you study the equation.”
Foreign students could soon be permitted to study at prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology, due to a new proposal from the Human Resource Development Ministry that it hopes will attract more international students and raise the country’s standing in global academic league tables.
For the complete article, please visit The PIE News.
Over the past two decades, the number of international students admitted annually to Canada has nearly tripled, according to a new study by Statistics Canada. Entitled “International students who become permanent residents in Canada,” the report examines the number and characteristics of international students as well as their transition to permanent residence. For the earliest cohort studied (1990 to 1994), a plurality were enrolled in primary or secondary school; for the most recent cohort (2010 to 2013), a plurality were enrolled in non-university postsecondary. The report suggests that students from countries with “lower levels of economic development and less favourable social and political environments” were more likely to seek permanent residence in Canada.
According to Statistics Canada, enrolments in public postsecondary institutions rose 1.2% for the 2013/14 academic year, bringing the total to more than 2 million. International enrolment rose even more quickly, up 2.5% over the previous year, and now accounts for nearly 10% of total enrolments. Enrolment rose the most in Ontario, followed by Quebec and British Columbia. Roughly 60% of enrolments were at the bachelor’s level or above. 56.3% of all students were women, but this proportion was only 45.6% for international students. Enrolment rose fastest in the category of architecture, engineering, and related technologies.
Immigrant students are outperforming Canadian-born students in their educational success, says a recent report from a triennial study by Statistics Canada. Overall, immigrant students were found to have higher levels of high school and university education than Canadian-born students; they were also more likely to report that they expected to, and did, graduate from university. According to the study’s authors, background characteristics of immigrants, such as their country of origin, explained some of the interregional differences in university success. Canadian-born students whose parents were immigrants had similar regional patterns of success as third-or-higher-generation Canadian children.
The Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) has released two new studies examining the international student population in Canada, with a particular focus on Ontario. In the report titled “International Students in Ontario’s Postsecondary Education System, 2000-2012,” researchers from Wilfrid Laurier University found that the average international student in Canada is male and attends college in the GTA. While the total number of international students in the country has grown, the number attending college has risen more quickly. In “The Global Competition for International Students as Future Immigrants,” researchers from York University and the University of Guelph explored ways to improve the experience for international students. They found that many ON universities have programs that target first-year students but lack supports for upper-year students. They also documented a need to “enhance interactions between international and domestic students.”
International students from different countries often look for different things when choosing to pursue a graduate degree in the US, according to a new report by World Education Services (WES). The study, titled “How Master’s Students Choose Institutions: Research on International Student Segmentation,” found that over 70% of Chinese students were able to pay more than $30 K per year for their studies and 58% were able to pay over $40 K. Nearly 70% of students from India, by comparison, had a budget of under $30 K. The survey also found that Chinese students valued institutional reputation most highly when choosing which institution to attend, while students from India were more likely to focus on the best return for their investment.
Ottawa’s PSE institutions are seeing ever-larger numbers of international students this fall, reports CBC. As of last week, the University of Ottawa had 1,350 new international students registered, its largest number so far. uOttawa’s Acting Manager of Media Relations Néomie Duval said that the school is focusing on international recruitment to offset a decreasing domestic student population in Canada. Algonquin College’s Doug Wotherspoon, VP of International, Communication, and Strategic Priorities, agreed with the approach, adding that “if you have rising costs, you have to have growth for you to survive. So obviously when your domestic numbers are going down you want to supplement that and keep growing, so international is the place to look for that.”
Sheridan College has launched an app designed to offer comprehensive assistance to international students applying to and enrolling in its programs. The initial version of the app—launched in May 2015—provides those who downloaded it with help uploading study permits, airport arrival assistance, a registration checklist, and a space to store emergency contact information. It also offers guidance with day-to-day activities like grocery shopping, banking, telecom troubleshooting, and finding places of worship. The app is available in a variety of languages and has been downloaded over 1,100 times to date.
Nearly 750 international university students have come to the Greater Toronto Area to partner with Canadian professors to produce cutting-edge research. The students have come as part of Mitacs’s Globalink program, which pays the participating students a set wage to visit Canada for a 12-week summer research period. Over three years, Canada has provided $20 M to attract these students to Canada. The research being undertaken this year includes the creation of robots that can land on asteroids, new marketing channels directed toward Baby Boomers, and solar-powered charging stations for electric cars. Visiting students have come primarily from India, China, Brazil, France, Mexico, and Australia.
Carleton University [CIEC Member] President Roseann O’Reilly Runte writes in an editorial for University Affairs that Canadian universities must do more to address the ongoing demand to become more global. To this end, she says that universities must work to build their international reputations while making sure that the proper resources are in place for international students to succeed after enrolment. But Runte adds that attracting more international students is only one side of the internationalization coin, the other being the need to send more Canadian students abroad. To achieve success in this regard, Canada will need to overcome three impediments that Runte identifies as financial, linguistic, and structural.
Canada will have to closely monitor the performance of its shifting policies toward education- and business-based immigration if it wishes to preserve its fundamental diversity, writes Jennifer Nees, a Toronto-based business immigration lawyer. While the Pan Am Games have given Canadians recent cause to celebrate their country’s diversity, Nees adds that “the last seven months have shown a different story in terms of our current immigration policy.” While earlier systems might have offered a clearer path for foreign students to obtain work permits and begin new careers in Canada, Nees adds that “now, however, these students are getting lost in a maze of complex new systems with operating glitches and inconsistent processing.”
The International Graduate Insight Group has recognized the College of the Rockies [CIEC Member] as the best institution in the world for overall international student satisfaction. This is the third consecutive year COTR has been named the top school in Canada in this regard and the second consecutive year it has received the title for best in the world. The designation draws upon the Graduate Insight Group’s International Student Barometer, the largest annual survey of international students in the world, covering the four categories of student arrival experience, learning, living, and support. Among the 183 institutions from 18 countries rated, COTR ranked first in all four categories.
Ontario has announced that it will extend funding for graduate studies to international students. Although no new funds are attached to the deal, the province plans to reallocate up to 130 graduate funding spots for international students starting this fall. The policy will give relief to the province’s universities, many of which currently cover the tuition and living costs associated with international students. University of Toronto President Meric Gertler said he hopes this new funding will help alleviate the frustration some Ontario professors have felt at being unable to work with international students due to lack of funds. He added, “we’ve been worried that frustration would cause them to look elsewhere, so this is for us a faculty retention and attraction strategy as well as a PhD student strategy.”
According to the Edmonton Journal, Alberta’s international students are facing wait times of up to three months and are consequently being kept from presenting their research at conferences around the world. These students currently cannot leave the country without renewing their Canadian permits and visas unless they risk significant delays upon re-entering the country. These delays can affect their standing in university programs where many have studied for several years. Marcella Cassiano, a third-year PhD student in sociology at the University of Alberta, said, “International graduate students are highly mobile people. We cannot afford to be grounded in Canada for five months waiting for document renewal and miss the opportunity to present our research in international conferences.”
Canada is seventh on the list of destinations for international students but could be much higher, according to a Globe and Mail op-ed. The Canadian Bureau for International Education (CBIE) projects that the number of students seeking education outside their home country will rise from 4.1 M in 2010 to 7.2 M by 2025. However, due in part to slow visa processing and lack of coordination, Canada could miss out. “[The challenge is] to develop a cohesive Canadian strategy to feature, highlight, promote our academic institutions, and that shouldn’t be just a city-specific or a provincial-specific strategy,” said Patricia McQuillan of Brand Matters Inc.
A new study by the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration (SVR) maps supports for the study-to-work transition for international students at 238 PSE institutions in Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The report indicates that large businesses are actively involved in hiring international students at 40% of Canadian institutions, and that small businesses are better represented among active recruiters on Canadian campuses than in the other countries. However, international students still often encounter a “patchwork” of resources, and more coordination is necessary. The study further recommends more information sharing, the development of shared goals, and greater involvement from municipalities.
Nova Scotia has introduced a new immigration stream that will help skilled applicants who have been working in the province for at least a year settle there permanently. “What we’ve heard from the universities and the colleges and the business community is that [workers] are falling through the cracks. They had jobs but [companies] couldn’t nominate them through the federal stream,” said NS Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab. It is hoped that the new express stream will encourage employers to target more international student graduates for hiring.
A new study from World Education Services has revealed some demographic effects of changes to Canada’s immigration policies. The results of a survey completed by approximately 3,200 prospective immigrants show that 95% of respondents were between the ages of 25 and 44, up from 84% before 2013. 59% of respondents said that their highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree, up from 34% in 2012, when Canada introduced the mandatory educational credential assessment process. 42% had a master’s degree, up from 18%, while the number of prospective immigrants with a PhD dropped from 5% in 2012 to 3%. 47% of respondents said they intended to settle in Ontario, 22% said Alberta, 12% said British Columbia, and 4% said Nova Scotia.
New Brunswick has launched a three-year pilot project that will help international students hoping to start businesses in the province. Through the initiative, graduates of the University of New Brunswick’s J Herbert Smith Centre for Technology and Entrepreneurship will receive help applying for permanent residency in Canada. Applicants to the program must invest a minimum of $10,000 in a new business, have an active management role in the company, and commit to not selling their business for at least three years after attaining permanent residency status. It is hoped that the project will help NB attract and retain international student entrepreneurs.
A new study from an Indian firm has found that the growth rate of the number of students from India attending university in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand has surpassed that of China. The number of Chinese students attending universities in the five countries grew by 8% between 2013 and 2014, while the number of Indian students grew by over 10%. However, the total number of Chinese students attending school abroad is more than double that of India. The report also notes that Indian students’ interest in Canada has grown, possibly because of negative attitudes toward Australia. Much of the growth in Canada has been driven by community colleges.
The Greater Victoria Development Agency (GVDA) has launched a new campaign to help attract international students to Vancouver Island. The initiative, called Education Victoria, has been created in partnership with Camosun College, Royal Roads University, the University of Victoria, and Tourism Victoria. GVDA’s Dallas Gislason said that attracting international students as potential residents will be key in a region that is expecting to face a labour shortage over the next 10 years, and added that international students can provide a significant boost to the economy. Moreover, Gislason said, international students offer “diverse perspectives … which deepen the learning experience for all students.”
Data shared on the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario’s (HEQCO’s) It’s Not Academic blog sheds light on the growth in international enrolment at Ontario’s publicly funded colleges and universities. The data show that in the past decade, the rate of growth in international enrolment at colleges has generally exceeded the rate of growth at universities. The growth in college enrolment spiked in 2010; HEQCO attributes this to the 2009 introduction of the Student Partners Program, which expedites the Canadian study permit process for citizens of India and China.
1) 
I hope this article brings to you the fire required to conduct what I believe is the biggest trip of your life. You will face challenges, culture shocks and misunderstandings, but you need to look beyond that. You will discover a new culture, make life-long friends, learn a new language, you will see landscapes that you can normally only see in movies. The memories and friendships created will remain long after the completion of your studies. By the way, the picture was taken in Munnar, Kerala in December 2015. Yes, life as an international student is pretty boring as you can see 😉 Give it a try, you will be surprised!