CANADIAN IMMIGRATION NEWS

Foreign Student Numbers in Canada Highest in a Decade

Wednesday, 25 March 2009

Last year Canada attracted nearly 80,000 international students to the country's higher education institutions. These figures represent the highest number of foreign students in a decade and initial reports for 2009 suggest that international student recruitment remains strong.

Canadian universities presume that the relatively cheaper tuition and weak Canadian dollar will continue to attract foreign students. In addition, international experts attribute the growth to increased promotional efforts overseas and changes to immigration regulations which make it easier for foreign students to work in and immigrate to Canada.

Case in point, the number of foreign students at Montreal universities has soared in the last decade, buoyed by a global hunger for post-secondary education and aggressive recruiting campaigns.

Foreign students at the Université de Montréal doubled between 1998 and 2008, accounting for 5,600 of the school's 56,000 students, including its affiliated schools, the École Polytechnique and HEC Montréal.

"Many programs offered here are not offered elsewhere," said university spokesperson Sylvain-Jacques Desjardins. "And there is an enormous tradition of French students coming to study because of the agreements the Quebec government has signed with France and other francophone nations for student exchanges."

Students from countries that have reciprocal arrangements pay Quebec rates, the lowest in North America, notes Bruno Viens, head of the international student office at the U de M.

For example, an international student in a master's degree program at the U de M, will pay $1,800 a year instead of the usual $6,000 fee for students from abroad. Furthermore, living expenses in Montreal are 30 per cent lower than most North American cities.

Students from 187 countries are enrolled at the U de M, 56 per cent from Europe and 28 per cent from Africa, especially the francophone nations of the northeast. Anglophone students are also targeted, permitted to write papers and exams in English if their professor allows. English universities have similar agreements for French students.

Canada is a young, sparsely populated nation of aging baby-boomers having trouble filling jobs that need university degrees, notes Lyse Huot, director of communications for the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada.

The number of foreign students in Canadian universities went from 25,000 in 1997 to 70,000 in 2006. China sends the most students, followed by the U.S., France, India, South Korea, Iran, Japan, Morocco and Pakistan. Those 10 countries account for 60 per cent of all foreign students in Canada.

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