Category: Canada

  • Canadian sector hits back over plan to cancel study permits in crises

    Canadian sector hits back over plan to cancel study permits in crises

    Immigration Minister Lena Diab told a House of Commons committee last week that the Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act (Bill C-12) would target “people who are going to be committing large-scale fraud”.

    However, an opposition member, Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner, rejected the idea that the Liberal government needs sweeping powers to keep the immigration system functioning.

    “That sounds like an authoritarian dictatorship to me,” Rempel Garner said.

    Languages Canada Executive Director Gonzalo Peralta told The PIE News there was a need to define under what conditions Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) could cancel student visas.

    “The term ‘public interest’ as grounds for cancelling visas or applications is vague and does not provide the assurances needed to ensure that legitimate students are not inadvertently impacted by the legislation,” Peralta said.

    At the committee meeting, Rempel Garner argued: “It seems like you’re trying to give yourself and your department more powers to correct mistakes in the system that they could have made in screening out potential fraud to begin with.” 

    The term ‘public interest’ as grounds for cancelling visas or applications is vague and does not provide the assurances needed

    In the wake of a large number of fraudulent study permit applications made by unscrupulous education agents, in 2023 the department implemented a system requiring applicants to present a verified letter of acceptance from a designated learning institution in order to obtain a study permit.

    In many cases, the students said they were not aware that their agent was submitting fraudulent documents on their behalf.

    MP Rempel Garner called out the minister for blaming students and other newcomers to Canada. “Why don’t you make the system work instead of punishing the victims of human trafficking,” she demanded at the meeting.

    Larissa Bezo, president of the Canadian Bureau for International Education (CBIE), told The PIE her group supports measures to uphold the integrity of the International Student Program. “However, we do not want to see international students who have been the victims of fraud unfairly punished,” Bezo said.

    Peralta of Languages Canada condemned the Liberal government for failing to consult with the sector about this legislation and other policy changes.

    “In the case of the proposed Bill C-12, a more comprehensive definition is needed of the specific conditions under which IRCC could cancel visas,” Peralta said.

    Canadian immigration policy has hit the headlines over the past week after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government set out its intention to cut new international study permits by more than 50% in 2026-2028 – going further with enrolment caps that are already causing significant problems for the international education sector.

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  • Canada’s path forward in international education

    Canada’s path forward in international education

    In my recent article for The PIE, I reflected on how Canada’s international education system has been moving through a period of turbulence and uncertainty, highlighting the compounding effects of the past several years, abrupt policy shifts, uneven communication, and ongoing immigration challenges that have created instability and eroded trust among students, families and global partners. 

    This second piece builds on that discussion. Canada’s international education sector continues to navigate a turbulent period, one that is reshaping how institutions, students, and communities make decisions today and plan for tomorrow.

    Yet within this turbulence lies an opportunity: to chart a clearer, more deliberate path forward that restores confidence and strengthens Canada’s global role. There is no simple fix, but by examining how other countries and Canadian provinces have approached similar challenges, we can begin identifying the building blocks of a more stable, coordinated and sustainable strategy.

    If Canada is to navigate this moment and rebuild stability and credibility, it must move beyond reactive decision-making. What is needed is a clear, long-term framework, one grounded in evidence, predictable investment, and collaboration across governments, institutions, employers and communities. Lessons from Germany, New Zealand and British Columbia demonstrate that more deliberate and sustainable approaches are not only possible, but necessary.

    Lessons from Germany’s model

    Germany provides a compelling example of how international education can be integrated into a broader national economic and demographic strategy. While the contexts differ, Germany’s constitutional division of responsibility for education between the federal government and the Länder is in many ways similar to Canada’s federal–provincial structure, making its approach worth examining. One important distinction is tuition: in most regions, international students pay minimal or no fees, reflecting a long-term view that the real return on investment comes from decades of workforce participation and tax revenue rather than short-term tuition income.

    A 2025 study by the German Economic Institute, commissioned by the German Academic Exchange Service, found that the 79,000 international students who began degree programs in 2022 could generate between €7.36 billion and €26 billion in lifetime net fiscal gains for the public sector coffers. Even under conservative projections, public investment in international students pays for itself within two to five years after graduation. International graduates could offset up to 20% of Germany’s projected GDP slowdown due to demographic change over the next decade.

    While Canada’s policy environment, tuition structures, and labour market integration differ, this illustrates what can be achieved with a coordinated national framework that aligns higher education with workforce needs.

    A key part of this approach is the Campus Initiative for International Talents and the FIT program. These initiatives fund universities to prepare students for academic life, support their integration, and connect them with employers before and after graduation. They also invest in expanded career services, targeted retention programs and partnerships with industry to ensure smoother transitions into the labour market. Critically, this is made possible by predictable, multi-year federal funding, allowing institutions to sustain, refine and scale initiatives over time while sharing lessons across the sector.

    New Zealand’s managed growth approach

    New Zealand offers another instructive model, one that is still in its early stages but marks a shift from previous approaches. Following a period of post-pandemic recovery, the government launched the International Education Going for Growth strategy in 2025, setting a ten-year target to nearly double the sector’s economic contribution by 2034. Rather than relying on abrupt changes, the plan outlines growth from 83,700 in 2024 to 119,000 by 2034 and double the sector’s value from NZ$3.6 billion to NZ$7.2 billion. The plan takes a phased approach, tying growth to quality, sustainability and alignment with workforce needs.

    Recent reforms include increasing in-study work limits from 20 to 25 hours per week, extending work rights to all tertiary exchange and study abroad students, and introducing a six-month post-study work visa for vocational graduates who do not qualify for longer-term rights. The government is also exploring easier access to multi-year visas. These measures aim to strengthen links between study, work experience, and skilled migration, while maintaining education quality and managing community impacts.

    The path forward is about tackling root causes through careful, well-designed policy that extends beyond surface-level fixes

    The strategy recognises the sector’s wider economic, social, cultural, and innovation-related value, and calls for closer coordination between education providers, employers, and industry. It also seeks market diversification beyond China and India, with targets to raise New Zealand’s profile globally and move more prospective students to rank it among their top three choices.

    It’s interesting to see New Zealand’s sector leaders pairing an ambitious growth target with a deliberate, measured pace. Their emphasis on balancing enrolment growth with infrastructure, regional distribution and public support offers important lessons for other countries including Canada as we rethink our own approach to rebuilding and re-imagining international education in a way that is both sustainable and socially supported. While too early to measure outcomes, Going for Growth shows how long-term targets, coordinated reforms and predictable policy can build stability, avoiding the uncertainty that comes with abrupt changes.

    British Columbia’s Approach 

    Closer to home, British Columbia has begun moving toward a more managed approach to international education one that offers useful reference points for other provinces to consider as they navigate similar pressures. The framework is designed to address key challenges: aligning enrolment with institutional and community capacity, encouraging more diversified student markets, connecting recruitment more closely to housing and student supports, and strengthening quality assurance to protect students and institutional reputation. More information on the province’s approach can be found in its Public Post-Secondary International Student Enrolment Guidelines, Education Quality Assurance framework, and requirements for multi-year institutional international education strategies.

    This approach is still evolving, but it signals a shift away from reactive measures toward more deliberate, longer-term planning. The broader takeaway across all three cases – Germany’s coordinated national investment, New Zealand’s managed growth plan, and British Columbia’s emerging provincial framework – is not that any has found the perfect solution, but that more thoughtful, workable approaches are possible even within a federal system like Canada’s. The path forward is less about adding new barriers and complexity, and more about tackling root causes through careful, well-designed policy that extends beyond surface-level fixes.

    A path forward for Canada

    Canada requires a deliberate course correction, one that is precise in its objectives, strategic in its design and anchored in robust evidence. This entails moving beyond reactive decision-making toward a coherent framework that establishes clear long-term goals, calibrates enrolment to institutional and community capacity, and embeds international education as a core pillar of national economic, demographic and innovation strategies.

    Achieving this demands sustained, structured coordination between federal, provincial and institutional partners, underpinned by transparency, reliable data and clearly defined performance metrics.

    As Canada looks ahead, several key aspects should guide the development of a stronger, more sustainable international education strategy:

    1. Transparency & accountability

    • Prioritise transparency by publishing timely, detailed data on study permit allocations, approval rates and processing times to enable evidence-based planning.
    • Streamline compliance processes by redesigning the Provincial Attestation Letter process to remove unnecessary steps while maintaining accountability and integrity.
    • Recognise sector diversity by applying policies that reflect institutional differences in size, mission, and track record, using a risk-based approach to oversight.

    2. Integration & coordination

    • Integrate policy planning across education, immigration and labour market needs so that international students are viewed as future members of Canada’s workforce and communities.
    • Establish a national roundtable that brings together governments, institutions, employers and communities to coordinate talent, skills and immigration strategies (as recommended by many groups across Canada CBIE, UniCan, CICan).

    3. Student success & retention

    • Invest in student success by funding housing, mental health services, and academic supports that benefit both domestic and international learners, while creating clear residency pathways to encourage long-term retention.
    • Adopt multi-year funding models for programs that link education with workforce integration, ensuring stability and continuity, similar to Germany’s FIT program.

    4. Narrative & public confidence

    • Reset the narrative by communicating the shared benefits of international education: sustaining academic programs, expanding opportunities, strengthening research capacity and contributing to Canada’s innovation ecosystem.
    • Build public trust by showing that investments in international education are not a zero-sum trade-off with domestic priorities, but a shared investment in Canada’s prosperity, global competitiveness and community vitality.

    Canada at a crossroads

    Canada is at a crossroads. The past 20 months have exposed the cost of reactive, fragmented policy: instability for students, institutions and communities. The “building the plane while flying it” approach cannot continue. This is also a moment of opportunity. Canada can create a transparent, predictable and collaborative international education system, one that recognises students not as temporary visitors, but as future citizens if they choose to stay, or as global ambassadors for Canada: skilled professionals, community builders and partners in strengthening our place in the world. 

    Germany’s integration of higher education into its national skilled labour strategy and New Zealand’s long-term managed growth plan both demonstrate that it is possible to balance integrity, economic benefit and student success. British Columbia’s recent steps show that proactive, well-planned policy is possible within Canada’s governance structure, and that each province can develop its own approach tailored to its specific context, priorities and capacity

    In a rapidly changing geopolitical environment, how Canada engages globally, attracts and retains talent, and integrates education with long-term national goals will shape its economic and social future. Canada can choose to lead with vision and strategy or watch as others secure the global talent, partnerships and influence that we have allowed to slip away.

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  • Re: University | Join the Conversation Before It’s Too Late

    Re: University | Join the Conversation Before It’s Too Late

    Hello Everyone,

    The Re: University team here! I know you didn’t expect to hear from us this week, but we just passed the 100-day mark until the Re: University conference and the excitement is getting real. For those of you who don’t know, we are hosting the conference in the Marriott Ottawa on January 28th and 29th. 

    Our full agenda will be released soon but we have begun announcing our speakers and themes. Our two-day agenda is focused on exploration and action.

    •  Day One looks outward and forward. Through provocative plenaries, global case spotlights, and rapid-fire exchanges, participants will examine how universities are adapting to shifting financial realities, emerging technologies, and new models of teaching and learning. The focus is on ideas: what’s possible, what’s working elsewhere, and what change might look like in practice. 
    • Day Two turns those ideas into strategy. Sessions will focus on the “how” of transformation, think: governance, funding models, partnerships, and culture change. Participants will dig into what it takes to move from experimentation to execution and build institutions that are both resilient and ready for the future. While we may be biased, it is an incredible lineup so far. 

    So if you haven’t already, you should check out who is on the agenda so far here.

    We also wanted to give you a heads up that we are 90% sold out of tickets so if you are planning to come, please make sure to get your ticket soon.

    The university is the focal point of this conference, although we have others attending from the college sector,  and we are so happy to say we have representatives from nearly 50 Canadian universities. If your institution isn’t on this list, we would love you to be part of the conversation:

    Algoma University

    Ambrose University

    Brock University

    Capilano University

    Carleton University

    Concordia University

    Dalhousie University

    Emily Carr University of Art and Design

    Kwantlen Polytechnic university

    Lakehead University

    McMaster University

    Memorial University of Newfoundland

    Mount Allison University

    Mount Royal University

    Mount Saint Vincent University

    Nipissing University

    Northeastern University

    Ontario College of Art & Design University

    Ontario Tech University

    Pacific Coast University for Workplace Health Sciences

    Queen’s University

    Saint Mary’s University

    Simon Fraser University

    St. Francis Xavier University

    St. Jerome’s University

    Thompson Rivers University

    Toronto Metropolitan University

    Trent University

    Université de l’Ontario français

    Université de Moncton

    Université de Montréal

    University College of the North

    University of Alberta

    University of British Columbia

    University of Calgary

    University of Guelph

    University of Guelph-Humber

    University of Manitoba

    University of Northern British Columbia

    University of Ottawa

    University of Regina

    University of Saskatchewan

    University of Toronto

    University of Victoria

    University of Waterloo

    Western University

    Wilfrid Laurier University

    York University

    Yorkville University

    We have been asked who should attend this conference and although it is open to anyone with an interest in the future of postsecondary education, we wanted to give you an idea of who will be joining these conversations. 

    40% of these attendees come from the President, Vice-President and Associate Vice-President portfolios, another 40% are Deans and Deputy Deans. The remaining 20% come from a wide range of roles such as CAOs, Special Advisors, Managers, Directors, Professors and many other important roles. We have attendees from institutions coast to coast with representatives also from colleges and polytechnics along with government, associations and various industry stakeholders. And not to forget our partners who we know are looking forward to meeting you all. Check them out here.

    Whoever you are, if you are passionate about the future of the university in Canada then now is the time to get involved in the conversation. 

    We hope to see you there,

    The Re: University Team

    Thank you to our partners:

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  • That Alberta Post-Secondary Review, Again

    That Alberta Post-Secondary Review, Again

    Just before I headed out on a work/vacation trip (I’m in Costa Rica today), the Government of Alberta dropped the report of the Expert Panel on Post-Secondary Institution Funding and Alberta’s Competitiveness, which I had previewed back here when the panel was formed about a year ago. So, on the way to the airport, I dashed off this blog to give you all the skinny. 

    First: it’s a good report! Might be the most sensible report on PSE that’s come out in Canada for quite some time, not least for the ways the Panel went beyond its mandate and actually addressed the elephant in the room, which was “how is Alberta going to educate this huge wave of students heading its way?” – a point which the government pointedly omitted from the Panel’s terms of reference. There are a few things in here which I think are a bit under-thought, which I will address below. But in the main, this is a report which you could apply in almost every province and we’d have a much better system than we have now.

    The report starts by laying out what it calls a “framework” for policy, which should:

    • Provide a space for every qualified Alberta student who wants to pursue post-secondary education (though, this could be quite expensive…I think it was a deliberate political choice to not include any costing in this document)
    • Focus on outcomes, providing incentives and rewarding performance in three key areas: teaching and student experience, research, and the impact institutions have on the communities they serve.
    • Set tuition in a manner that balances the importance of certainty for students with the reality of increasing costs in institutions.
    • Encourage government to reconsider the extent of controls it exercises over institutions, and reduce unnecessary red tape, so as to provide institutions with the autonomy and flexibility they need.

    See? All eminently sensible. But, of course, the devil is in the details, which the panel outlines in eleven specific recommendations. Seven of these are so sensible that they barely require comment. These include recommendation 3 (improve funding and administration of apprenticeship programs), recommendation 4 (fund IT infrastructure on a long-term basis rather than via ongoing operating funding), recommendation 6 (bring back student grants!), recommendation 7 (more international students!), recommendation 8 (government to back off, provide institutions with more autonomy), recommendation 9 (less red tape for institutions), and recommendation 10 (faster government approval of new programs).

    So far, so good. The remaining four recommendations present some complications, though. I’ll go through them one by one.

    Recommendation 1 suggests that Alberta should adopt an actual funding formula to divide public spending between institutions (it is currently one of the largest jurisdictions in the world without one; to my knowledge only BC is bigger). It further suggests that the formula consists of three components: weighted enrolment, (i.e. weighted to recognize that clinical education costs more than laboratory education which costs more than classroom education), performance (assuming the indicators are smart and measurable, which the panel suggests might not be the case for all the indicators in the current performance-based funding arrangement), and a “base” funding component. 

    All fine in principle, but two points. First, when you have institutions as disparate in size as Alberta does (50K at University of Alberta to 1300 at the Alberta University of the Arts), a “base” component is hard to design properly. The idea is to recognize that institutions have fixed costs that probably won’t get covered properly under an enrolment-weighted formula alone but that’s hard to do in a way that actually works but doesn’t wildly subvert any normal principles of equity  (I know, I tried sketching one for the Manitoba College system a decade ago, and it’s hard). Second – and somewhat relatedly – the Panel skips over the bit where a previous government within the last decade tried to do develop a formula much like this one and discovered that any sensible enrolment-weighted system would probably eviscerate two or three of the smaller regional colleges, which was seen as impractical from a political POV (the Minister of the Day trashed the report without publishing it, which is why you may not have heard this story). The math and politics won’t have changed, so getting this idea up and running might be easier said than done.

    Onwards to recommendation 2, which asks the government to introduce targeted, time-limited funding initiatives to a) attract top research talent, b) support innovation and developing technology, and c) provide incentives and support for collaboration among institutions. The ideas are fine, but the logic for time-limiting the measure seems obscure to me.

    Now to recommendation 5, on tuition fees. This is where the report is at its hand-waviest, and I think there is a lot of subtext here which is not fully explained. Currently, there is a 2% cap on all tuition increases. The panel wants that to be maintained for students once they have begun their studies, so as to give them “price stability”. But they also think that institutions should be given “discretion” to raise tuition for first-year students more radically year-by-year, because institutions need money.

    Here’s where it gets handwave-y. The panel does not advocate for de-regulation; whether out of conviction or political realism I can’t say. Rather, it suggests that the Alberta government should set “maximum allowable tuition” every year, on a field of study basis, and institutions should have the freedom to set tuition fees up to that maximum. I think the logic at work here is the same as that seen in the UK in both the 2006 and 2012 fee reforms, which was that if the government set a maximum, institutions would have space to “compete on price” and the big prestigious universities would be able to charge a quality premium.  As we saw in the UK, though, this is a naïve assumption: since price tends to act as a proxy for quality in the public mind (because God forbid anyone actually try to measure quality), what happens in these situations is that all institutions will quickly drive to the max, meaning that in effect, it’s still government setting the fees, with all the politics that entails (decent chance the maximum will be $0 if/when the NDP return to power). I am not sure this has been well thought-through.

    Anyways, on to the final recommendation, which is that on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (which, it should be noted, was also not part of the Panel’s mandate). In the discussion section, it cites mostly American examples, argues for “institutional neutrality” with respect to political issues (this means no boycotts, apparently, although I suspect if the panel told Alberta’s Ukrainian community that U of A was going to be forced to maintain relations with Russian universities on grounds of institutional neutrality, there would be riots). It also makes veiled references to “federal research grant requirements, which require explicit commitments to equity, diversity and inclusion as part of their selection and approval process…[which] can limit academic freedom and direct the focus of research”. So far, so Alberta.

    But then if you look at the actual recommendation, there are two points to make. The first is that the panel chooses to place “Indigenization” as a separate category from the rest of EDI (they don’t quite say Indigenization = good, EDI = bad, but you’d be forgiven for thinking that this is in fact the panel’s view). And the second is that the actual recommendation is pretty anodyne. It’s written in such a way that allows the anti-woke to claim that we need constant vigilance and for institutions to be able to hit the snooze button and go back to sleep because they already do what is being recommended. Not quite a nothing burger, but pretty close.

    In any event: it’s a solid report and while I think there will be one or two twists and complications in implementation, the direction in which it points is a promising one. Hopefully the government will accept the report and get to work on it as soon as possible.

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  • Newfoundland and Labrador Manifestos, 2025

    Newfoundland and Labrador Manifestos, 2025

    Ok, folks, today is voting day in Newfoundland and Labrador, and so, as usual, it’s time to look at manifesto promises with respect to post-secondary education.

    Newfoundland is feeling pretty good these days. Just five years ago it was living with a budget deficit of about $1 billion, and the only reason it was that low was because of a federal bailout for the Muskrat Falls dam. Now, the province *almost* has a balanced budget, it has the fastest-growing provincial economy in the country (I know, low bar, but still), and it has a new Memorandum of Understanding with Hydro-Quebec to replace the Upper Churchill contract which will – in theory at least – transform provincial finances, though not everyone is convinced. The debt load is still considerable ($47 billion) and servicing that debt takes up more money than the province spends on education. But who cares about long-term problems when there are votes to be bought…er…sought?

    Let’s start with the commitments New Democratic Party, which usually wins at least one or two seats in the House of Assembly. They promise three things with respect to post-secondary education. First, they want to reverse the Liberals’ decision to let tuition rise after a 20-year freeze. Because of the deeply opaque way the NDP’s presents its costing data, it is unclear if the NDP intends to actually reimburse College of the North Atlantic (CNA) and Memorial for this or if it is simply going to tell them to eat it (a little back-of-the-envelope math suggests the rise tuition is bringing in somewhere between $20-$25 million/yr by my estimation). Second, it is going to pay CAN $10/million to increase trades training. And third, it is going to find a way to give healthcare students paid work terms.

    Now, over to the Conservative Party, which does occasionally win elections (in fact it won three in a row in 2003, 2007 and 2011, and held power for 12 years). Oddly, the Conservatives have published a document called “Platform Highlights” but not an actual platform. The party seems to be running on strictly three planks made up of precisely one adjective and one noun (“Better Healthcare”, “Safer Communities” and “Lower Taxes”). Post-secondary students get in on the action, but not institutions. Like the NDP, they want to provide paid work terms for students (though in the Conservatives’ case this doesn’t seem to be limited to health care). They also want to “guarantee jobs for students training in a program where there are staff shortages” (this does seem to be limited to health care), and finally, provide a tuition refund for graduates who work in the province. This is, of course, a policy which, as I have explained on more than one occasion, is as dumb as a bag of hammers. 

    So, now over to the governing Liberals, whose pitch can be summed up as “we signed an MOU with Hydro-Quebec to re-up the Churchill Falls agreement and boy are we going to be rich!” Yet, perhaps because of the enormous debt, while the Liberals are making a lot of promises, a lot of them are pretty small ball. A million here, a million there – in the big scheme of things, it’s fairly restrained. (Aside: one of the more interesting provincial pledges I have seen anywhere in recent years is the Liberal pledge on the Technology and Defense sectors, which I think points to an interesting possible future where National Security actually comes to be seen as an area where provinces have some agency and some responsibility).

    Anyways, back to post-secondary education, where the Liberal manifesto promises, as I say, are pretty restrained. It basically comes down to three things. First, the Liberals promise to cover all the costs of tuition associated with all practicum courses for Newfoundland and Labrador nursing students, and offer all graduating nurses full-time permanent positions in Newfoundland and Labrador. Second, they want to create a one-time moving allowance of up to $500 per student for rural students to assist with moving costs to study in St. John’s. And third, they are going to work with Memorial and CNA to expand capacity in certain fields related to new construction in Churchill Falls.

    In other words, friends: today’s vote in Newfoundland is another episode in that continuing tradition of the New Canadian Post-Secondary Consensus, in which every party in every province believes that:

    1)      Money for students is good while money for institutions is not, and

    2)      To the extent post-secondary education has value, it is exclusively related to Nursing and the Construction Trades.

    So, God guard thee, Newfoundland. And God help us all if, as seems increasingly likely, this is the future of Canadian post-secondary education.

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  • Canada: 47k int’l students flagged for potential visa non-compliance

    Canada: 47k int’l students flagged for potential visa non-compliance

    Aiesha Zafar, assistant deputy minister for migration integrity at IRCC, told the House of Commons Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration that 8% of international students reviewed were potentially “non-compliant”, meaning they were not attending classes as required by the terms of their study visa.

    “In terms of the total number of students we asked for compliance information from, that results in potentially 47,175. We have not yet determined whether they are fully non-compliant, these are initial results provided to us by institutions,” stated Zafar, who was questioned by Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner about where these students are currently, if they are not complying with their visa terms.

    Determining full non-compliance of the international students, however, is not straightforward, as institutions report data at varying intervals, and students may change schools, graduate, or take authorized leaves.

    Zafar noted that IRCC shares all the data it continually collects with the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), which is responsible for locating and removing non-compliant visa holders.

    “Any foreign national in Canada would be under the purview of the CBSA, so they have an inland investigation team,” Zafar told the committee when Garner questioned how the IRCC is able to track and remove students who are in violation of their visas.

    The 47,000 non-compliance cases are a backlog, evidence that fraud detection is strengthening, not weakening, Canadian standards
    Maria Mathai, M.M Advisory Services

    According to Maria Mathai, founder of M.M Advisory Services, which supports Canadian universities in the South Asian market, the figure of over 47,000 students who could be non-compliant being portrayed as a “crisis” misses the real story — that Canada’s immigration system is actively adapting.

    “Front-end Provincial Attestation Letter (PAL) screening now blocks thousands who would have entered before, and ongoing oversight is catching legacy issues. The 47,000 non-compliance cases are a backlog, evidence that fraud detection is strengthening, not weakening, Canadian standards,” Mathai told The PIE News.

    Mathai acknowledged that past PAL allocations contributed to compliance challenges, with regions like Ontario, which hosts the largest share of international students, directing most of its PALs to colleges with higher default rates.

    However, the situation is expected to change with IRCC now imposing strict provincial caps on the number of study permits each province can issue.

    “By surfacing these imbalances now, the new framework is encouraging provinces and institutions to adapt entry practices based on evidence and learning,” stated Mathai.

    Canada’s international student compliance regime, in effect since 2014, was established to identify potentially non-genuine students.

    It includes twice-yearly compliance reporting conducted in partnership with Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs), Canadian colleges, institutes, and universities authorised to host international students.

    While IRCC’s 2024 report noted no recourse against non-reporting DLIs, new rules now allow such institutions to be suspended for up to a year.

    Moreover, Canada’s struggle with international students not showing up for classes is not new, with reports earlier this year indicating nearly 50,000 instances of “no-shows”, international students who failed to enrol at their institutions, in the spring of 2024.

    While the “no-show” cohort included 4,279 Chinese students, 3,902 Nigerian students, and 2,712 Ghanaian students, Indian students accounted for the largest share at 19,582. It highlights a broader issue of immigration fraud originating from India, which Zafar identified as one of the top countries for such cases during her September 23 committee testimony.

    Over a quarter of international students seeking asylum in Canada also came from India and Nigeria.

    According to Pranav Rathi, associate director of international recruitment at Fanshawe College, which hosts one of the largest numbers of Indian students in Ontario, a “rigorous approach” has led to about 20% of Indian applications being declined to ensure only qualified candidates proceed.

    “Each application is carefully reviewed, and checked for aggregate scores, backlogs, and authenticity of mark sheets. We keep ourselves updated with the recognised institution list published by UGC,” stated Rathi.

    “It is mandatory for a student to provide English language tests approved by IRCC and we also verify English proficiency through IELTS or equivalent test reports to confirm readiness for study in Canada.”

    Rathi suggested that one reason Indian students often appear among potentially non-compliant or “no-show” cases is a systemic issue that previously allowed them to change institutions after receiving a study permit.

    He added that schools now need to take a more active role, particularly when students apply through education agents.

    “Institutions should ensure that their representatives are transparent, well-trained, and follow ethical recruitment practices that align with institutional and regulatory standards,” stated Rathi.

    “Ongoing collaboration between institutions and government bodies to monitor market trends and share insights can help build a more transparent and sustainable international education system.”

    Many Canadian institutions are now facing headwinds, with course offerings and research funding being cut as Canada’s study permit refusal rate has climbed to its highest level in over a decade.

    Canadian politicians have also intensified scrutiny of institutions across the country.

    Just days after the IRCC testimony on non-compliant students, a federal committee hearing led by MP Garner saw Conestoga College president John Tibbits questioned on issues ranging from his $600,000 salary to allegations of “juicing foreign student permits” amid growing concerns that healthcare, housing, and jobs that “don’t have capacity” in Ontario.

    “Colleges, including Conestoga, have been subject to scrutiny about the role international [students] play in housing, affordability and community pressures. I welcome the opportunity to reaffirm that Conestoga’s approach has always been about service. Our mission has always been to ensure the communities we serve have access to the skilled labour force they need to survive,” stated Tibbits, while addressing the committee on Thursday.

    “Looking ahead, we believe this is the time to stabilize the system to build an international student program that is sustainable, fair, globally competitive and focused on Canada’s economic priorities,” he added, as reported by CTV News.

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  • Three Notable StatsCan Papers | HESA

    Three Notable StatsCan Papers | HESA

    Over the summer, Statistics Canda put out a few papers on higher education and immigration which got zero press but nevertheless are interesting enough that I thought you might all want to hear about them. Below are my précis: 

    The first paper, Recent trends in immigration from Canada to the United States by Feng Hou, Milly Yang and Yao Lu, is a very general look at outbound migration to the United States, looking  specifically at the characteristics of Canadian citizens who applying for labour certification in the United States in 2015 and in 2024. I found the three top-line results all somewhat surprising.

    • The number of US certification applicants declined by just over 25% between 2015 and 2024.
    • Outbound migration to the US by Canadians is predominantly a “new” Canadian thing. In 2015, Canadian citizens born outside Canada made up 54% of those seeking certification, and by 2024 that proportion had increased to nearly 60%.
    • Among Canadians seeking US certification in 2015, 41% had a master’s or doctoral degree.  In 2024, that proportion had fallen to 31%.

    In other words, brain drain to the US changed significantly over the space of a decade: fewer Canadians headed south, and among those who did, declining proportions were Canadian-born or held advance degrees. All somewhat surprising.

    The second paper, Fields of study and occupations of immigrants who were international students in Canada before immigration by Youjin Choi and Li Xu, divides out two recent cohorts (2011-15 and 2016-21) of immigrants and starts to tease out various aspects of their current status in Canada.  Here the key findings were:

    • In the 2011-15 period, 13% of all immigrants were former international students. By the 2016-21 period, that number had risen to 23%.
    • About a third of immigrants who were students in Canada say their highest degree was taken outside Canada. It’s a bit difficult to parse this. It may mean, for instance, that they obtained a bachelor’s degree in Canada, went to another country for their master’s degree and came back; it may also mean that they took a master’s degree abroad and took some kind of short post-graduate certificate here.
    • A little over a third of all immigrants who studied in Canada have a STEM degree, a proportion that increased a tiny bit over time. This is higher than for the Canadian-born population, but not hugely different from that of immigrants who did not study here.
    • A little under half of all former international STEM students in the immigrant pool were working in a STEM field, but this is strongly correlated with the level of education. Among sub-Bachelor’s graduates this proportion was a little over 20%, while among those with a Master’s degree or higher it was over 50%. This is significantly higher than it is for Canadian-born post-secondary graduates. In non-STEM fields, the relationship is reversed (i.e. Canadian-born graduates are more likely to be working in an aligned field).

    In other words, former international students are a rising proportion of all immigrants, a high proportion are STEM graduates, and a high proportion of them go on to work in STEM fields. All signs that policy is pushing results in the intended direction.

    The final paper, Retention of science, technology, engineering, mathematics and computer science graduates in Canada by Youjin Choi and Feng Hou, follows three cohorts of both domestic and international student graduates to see whether they stayed in the country (technically, it measures the proportion of graduates who file tax returns in Canada, which is a pretty good proxy for residency). The results are summed up in one incredibly ugly chart (seriously, why is StatsCan dataviz so awful?), which I reproduce below:

    So, in the chart the Y-axis is the percentage of STEM graduates who stay in Canada (measured by the proxy of tax filing) and the X-axis is years since graduation. Since they are following three different cohorts of graduates, the lines don’t all extend to the same length (the earliest cohort could be followed for ten years, the middle for seven and the most recent for just three).  The red set of lines represents outcomes for Canadian-born students and the blue set of lines does the same for international students.

    So, the trivial things this graph shows are that: i) both Canadian and international students leave Canada but ii) international students do so more frequently and iii) leaving the country is something that happens gradually over time. The interesting thing it shows, though, is that the most recent cohort (class of 2018) of STEM graduates are more likely to stay than earlier ones, and that this is especially true for international students: the retention rate of international graduates from the class of 2018 was almost fifteen percentage points higher than for the class of 2015.

    Was it a more welcoming economy? Maybe. But you’d have to think that our system of offering international students a path to citizenship had something to do with it too.

    Two other nuggets in the paper:

    • Canadian-born STEM graduates are slightly more likely to leave than non-STEM graduates (it’s not a huge difference, just a percentage point or two) while among international student graduates, those from STEM programs are substantially less likely to leave than those from non-STEM fields (a fifteen-point gap or more).
    • Regardless of where they are from, and regardless of what they studied, graduates from “highly-ranked” universities (no definition given, unfortunately) were more likely to leave Canada, presumably because degree prestige confers a certain degree of mobility.

    You are now fully up to date on the latest data on domestic and international graduates and their immigration pathways. Enjoy your day.

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  • How About Grade 13? | HESA

    How About Grade 13? | HESA

    Hey everyone, quick bit of exciting Re: University news before we get started. Our speakers are beginning to go live on the site here. We’ll be shouting them out on the blog over the next few weeks, so watch this space. Also, a huge thanks to our many dynamic partners and sponsors for making it all happen, check them out here. And of course, thank you to everyone who has already grabbed a ticket, we are already 75% sold out and we are looking forward to having some very interesting conversations with you in January. Anyway, on with the blog…

    Question:  What policy would increase student preparation for post-secondary education, thus lowering dropouts and average time-to-completion while at the same time lowering per-student delivery costs?

    Answer: Introducing (or re-introducing) Grade 13 and move (or return) to make 3-year degrees the norm.

    It’s a policy that has so many benefits it’s hard to count them all. 

    Let’s start with the basic point that older students on the whole are better-prepared students. In North America, we ask students to grow up and make decisions about academics and careers awfully early. In some parts of the world, they deal with this by having students take “gap years” to sort themselves out. In North America we are very Calvinist (not the good kind) about work and study, and think of tie off just to mature and think as “wasteful”, so we drive them from secondary school to university/college as fast as possible. 

    But there’s no reason that the line between secondary and post-secondary education needs to be where it is today. In antebellum America, the line was in people’s early teens; and age 18 wasn’t an obvious line until after World War II (Martin Luther King Jr. started at Morehead College age 15 because it decided to start taking high school juniors). The Philippines drew the line after 10 years of schooling until about six years ago. Ontario’s elimination of grade 13 was one of the very few examples anywhere in the world of a jurisdiction deciding to roll the age of transition backwards.

    But it’s not clear in Ontario – which has now run this experiment for nearly 25 years – that the system is better off if you make students go to post-secondary education at 18 rather than 19. If you give students an extra year to mature, they probably have a better sense of what specific academic subjects actually consist of and how they lead to various careers. Because they have a better sense of what they want to do with their lives, they study with more purpose. They are more engaged. And almost everything we know about students suggests that more engaged students are easier to teach, switch programs less often, and drop out less frequently. 

    These all seem like good outcomes that we threw away for possibly no good reason.

    Students would spend another year at home. Not all of them would enjoy that, but their parents’ pocket-books sure would. They’d also spend one more year in classes of approximately thirty instead of classes of approximately three hundred. Again, this seems like a good thing.

    And as for cost, well, the per-student cost of secondary education is significantly lower than that of the per-student cost of post-secondary education. I don’t just mean for families, for whom the cost of secondary school is zero. I also mean for governments who are footing the bill for the post-secondary part of the equation, too (at least this is the case everywhere outside Ontario, which has abysmal levels of per-student spending on public post-secondary education). 

    There really is only one problem with moving from a 6+6+4 system of education to a 6+7+3 system.  It’s not that a three-year degree is inherently bad or inadequate. Quebec has a 6+5+2+3 system and as far as I know no one complains. Hell, most of Europe, and to some extent Manitoba, are on a 6+6+3 system and no one blinks. 

    No, the problem is space. Add another year of secondary school and you need bigger secondary schools. And no one is likely to want to get into that, particularly when the system is already bursting – in most of the country, particularly in western Canada – from a wave of domestic enrolments. It is possible that some universities and colleges could convert some of their space to house high schools (the University of Winnipeg has quite a nice one in Wesley Hall), but that wouldn’t be a universal solution. Architecture and infrastructure in this case act as a limiting factor on policy change. However, by the early-to-mid 2030s when secondary student and then post-secondary numbers level off or even start to decline again, that excuse will be gone. Why wouldn’t we consider this?

    (Technically another potential solution here of is to adopt something like a CEGEP, since these which arguably bridge the gap between secondary and university better that grade 13 did. But the real estate/infrastructure demands of creating a new class of institutions probably make that a non-starter).

    Anyways, this is just idle talk. This might be a complete waste of time and money, of course. My suggestions about possible benefits could be totally off. Interestingly, as far as I know, Ontario never did a post-policy implementation review about eliminating grade 13/Ontario Academic Credits. Did we gain or lose as a society? What were the cost implications? Seems like the kind of questions to which you’d want to know the answers (well, I wish I lived in a country that thought these were questions worth answering, anyway). And even if we thought there were benefits to keeping students out of post-secondary for one more year, architectural realities would almost certainly get in the way. 

    But if we’re genuinely interested in thinking about re-making systems of education, these are the sorts of questions we should be asking. Take nothing for granted.

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  • Testing Times & Interesting Discussions

    Testing Times & Interesting Discussions

    Last week, The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) put out a discussion paper called Testing Times: Fending Off A Crisis in Post-Secondary Education, which in part is the outcome of a set of cross-country discussions held this summer by RBC, HESA, and the Business Higher Education Roundtable. (BHER). The paper, I think, sums up the current situation pretty well: the system is not at a starvation point but is heading in that direction pretty quickly and that needs to be rectified. On the other hand, there are some ways that institutions could be moving more quickly to respond to changing social and economic circumstances. What’s great about this paper is that it balances those two ideas pretty effectively.

    I urge everyone to read it themselves because I think it sums up a lot of issues nicely – many of which we at HESA will be taking up at our Re: University conference in January (stay tuned! the nearly full conference line-up will be out in a couple of weeks, and it’s pretty exciting). But I want to draw everyone’s attention to section 4 of the report, in particular which I think is the sleeper issue of the year, and that is the regulation of post-secondary institutions. One of the things we heard a lot on the road was how universities were being hamstrung – not just by governments but by professional regulatory bodies – in terms of developing innovative programming. This is a subject I’ll return to in the next week or two, but I am really glad that this issue might be starting to get some real traction.

    The timing of this release wasn’t accidental: it came just a few days before BHER had one of its annual high-level shindigs, and RBC’s CEO Dave MacKay is also BHER’s Board Chair, so the two go hand-in-hand to some extent. I was at the summit on Monday – a Chatham House rules session at RBC headquarters – which attracted a good number of university and college presidents, as well as CEOs – entitled Strategic Summit on Talent, Technology and a New Economic Order. The discussions took up the challenge in the RBC paper to look at where the country is going and where the post-secondary education sector can contribute to making a new and stronger Canada.

    And boy, was it interesting.

    I mean, partly it was some of the outright protectionist stuff being advocated by the corporate sector in the room. I haven’t heard stuff like that since I was a child. Basically, the sentiment in the room is that the World Trade Organization (WTO) is dead, the Americans aren’t playing by those rules anymore, so why should we? Security of supply > low-cost supply. Personally, I think that likely means that this “new economic order” is going to mean much more expensive wholesale prices, but hey, if that’s what we have to adapt to, that’s what we have to adapt to.

    But, more pertinent to this blog were the ways the session dealt with the issue of what in higher education needs to change to meet the moment. And, for me, what was interesting was that once you get a group of business folks in a room and ask what higher education can do to help get the country on track, they actually don’t have much to say. They will talk a LOT about what government can do to help get the country on track. The stories they can tell about how much more ponderous and anti-innovation Canadian public procurement policies are compared to almost any other jurisdiction on earth would be entertaining if the implications were not so horrific. They will talk a LOT about how Canadian C-suites are risk-averse, almost as risk-averse as government, and how disappointing that is.

    But when it comes to higher education? They don’t actually have all that much to say. And that’s both good and bad.

    Now before I delve into this, let me say that it’s always a bit tricky to generalize what a sector believes based on a small group of CEOs who get drafted into a room like this one. I mean, to some degree these CEOs are there because they are interested in post-secondary education, so they aren’t necessarily very representative of the sector. But here’s what I learned:

    • CEOs are a bit ruffled by current underfunding of higher education. Not necessarily to the point where they would put any of their own political capital on the line, but they are sympathetic to institutions.
    • When they think about how higher education affects their business, CEOs seem to think primarily about human capital (i.e. graduates). They talk a lot less about research, which is mostly what universities want to talk about, so there is a bit of a mismatch there.
    • When they think about human capital, what they are usually thinking about is “can my business have access to skills at a price I want to pay?” Because the invitees are usually heads of successful fast-growing companies, the answer is usually no. Also, most say what they want are “skills” – something they, not unreasonably, equate with experience, which sets up another set of potential misunderstandings with universities because degrees ≠ experience (but it does mean everyone can agree on more work-integrated learning).
    • As a result – and this is important here – it’s best if CEOs think about post-secondary education in terms of firm growth, not in terms of economy-wide innovation.

    Now, maybe that’s all right and proper – after all, isn’t it government’s business to look after the economy-wide stuff? Well, maybe, but here’s where it gets interesting. You can drive innovation either by encouraging the manufacture and circulation of ideas (i.e. research) or by diffusing skills through the economy (i.e. education/training). But our federal government seems to think that innovation only happens via the introduction of new products/technology (i.e., the product of research), and that to the extent there is an issue with post-secondary education, it is that university-based research doesn’t translate into new products fast enough – i.e. the issue is research commercialization. The idea that technological adoption might be the product of governments and firms not having enough people to use new technologies properly (e.g. artificial intelligence)? Not on anyone’s radar screen.

    And that really is a problem. One I am not sure is easily fixed because I am not sure everyone realizes the degree to which they are talking past each other. But that said, the event was a promising one. It was good to be in a space where so many people cared about Canada, about innovation, and about post-secondary education. And the event itself – very well pulled-off by RBC and BHER – made people want to keep discussing higher education and the economy. Both business and higher education need to have events like this one, regularly, and not just nationally but locally as well. The two sides don’t know each other especially well, and yet their being more in sync is one of the things that could make the country work a lot better than it does. Let’s keep talking.

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  • Education at a Glance 2025, Part 1

    Education at a Glance 2025, Part 1

    The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its annual stat fest, Education at a Glance (EAG), two weeks ago and I completely forgot about it. But since not a single Canadian news outlet wrote anything about it (neither it nor the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada saw fit to put together a “Canada” briefing, apparently), this blog – two weeks later than usual – is still technically a scoop.

    Next week, I will review some new data from the Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) that was released in EAG and perhaps – if I have time – some data from EAG’s newly re-designed section on tertiary-secondary. Today, I am going to talk a bit about some of the data on higher education and financing, and specifically, how Canada has underperformed the rest of the developed world – by a lot – over the past few years.

    Now, before I get too deep into the data, a caveat. I am going to be providing you with data on higher education financing as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product. And this is one of those places where OECD really doesn’t like it when people compare data across various issues of EAG. The reason, basically, is that OECD is reliant on member governments to provide data, and what they give is not consistent. On this specific indicator, for instance, the UK data on public financing of higher education are total gibberish, because the government keeps changing its mind on what constitutes “public funding” (this is what happens when you run all your funding through tuition fees and student loans and then can’t decide how to describe loan forgiveness in public statistics). South Korea also seems to have had a re-think about a decade ago with respect to how to count private higher education expenditure as I recounted back here. 

    There’s another reason to be at least a little bit skeptical about the OECD’s numbers, too: it’s not always clear what is and is not included in the numbers. For instance, if I compare what Statistics Canada sends to OECD every year with the data it publishes domestically based on university and college income and on its own GDP figures, I never come up with exactly the same number (specifically, the public spending numbers it provides to OECD are usually higher than what I can derive from what is presumably the same data). I suspect other countries may have some similar issues. So, what I would remind everyone is simply: take these numbers as being broadly indicative of the truth, but don’t take any single number as gospel.

    Got that? OK, let’s look at the numbers. 

    Figure 1: Public and Private Expenditure on Tertiary Institutions as a Percentage of GDP, Select OECD Countries, 2022

    Canada on this measure looks…OK. Public expenditure is a little bit below the OECD average, but thanks to high private expenditure, it’s still significantly above the average. (Note, this data is from before we lost billions of dollars to a loss of international student fees, so presumably the private number is down somewhat since then). We’re not Chile, we’re not the US or the UK, but we’re still better than the median.

    Which is true, if all you’re looking at is the present. Let’s go look at the past. Figure 2, below, shows you two things. First, the amount of money a country spends on its post-secondary education system usually doesn’t change that much. In most countries, in most years, moving up or down one-tenth of a percentage point is a big deal, and odds are even over the course of a decade or so, your spending levels just don’t change that much.

    Figure 2: Total Expenditure on Tertiary Institutions as a Percentage of GDP, Select OECD Countries, 2005-2022

    Second, it shows you that in both Canada and the United States, spending on higher education, as a percentage of the economy, is plummeting. Now, to be fair, this seems like more of a denominator issue than a numerator issue. Actual expenditures aren’t decreasing (much) but the economy is growing, in part due to population growth, which isn’t really happening in the same way in Europe.

    There is a difference between the US and Canada, though. And that is where the decline is coming from. In the US, it is coming (mostly) from lower private-sector contributions, the result of a decade or more of tuition restraint. In Canada, it is coming from much lower public spending. Figure 3 shows change in public spending as a percentage of GDP since 2005.

    Figure 3: Change in Public Expenditure on Tertiary Institutions as a Percentage of GDP since 2005, Select OECD Countries, 2006-2022

    As you can see here, few countries are very far from where they started in terms of spending as a percentage of GDP per capita. Australia and Sweden are both down a couple of tenths of a percentage point. Lucky Netherlands is up a couple of tenths of a percentage point (although note this is before the very large cutbacks imposed by the coalition government last year). But Canada?  Canada is in a class all of its own, down 0.6% of GDP since just 2011. (Again, don’t take these numbers as gospel: on my own calculations I make the cut in public funding a little bit less than that – but still at least twice as big a fall as the next-worst country).

    In sum: Canada’s levels of investment in higher education are going the wrong way, because governments of all stripes at both the federal and provincial level have thought that higher education is easily ignorable or not worth investing in. As a result, even though our population and economy are growing, universities and colleges are being told to keep operating like it’s 2011. The good news is that we have a cushion: we were starting from a pretty high base, and for many years we had international student dollars to keep us afloat. As a result, even after fifteen years of this nonsense, Canada’s levels of higher education investment still look pretty good in comparison to most countries. The bad news: now that the flow of international student dollars has been reduced, the ground is rising up awfully fast.

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