Regg Cohn: Blame Doug Ford for turning a blind eye to student immigration abuses

2024/01/29 Leave a comment

Reminder of the Ontario government’s role in exacerbating the problems:

….

There’s plenty of blame to go around — federal and provincial, Liberal and Tory, public and private, educators and entrepreneurs.

What makes Poilievre’s public musings so amusing — or laughably unserious — is his political gamesmanship about all those gaming the system. The Conservative leader stressed that visa seekers “are not to blame for (Miller)’s incompetence.”

By posing so earnestly as a protector of foreigners, Poilievre is being too clever by half. While some innocent foreigners might be misled by middlemen, many other migrants know precisely what they’re up to by leveraging student visas to get a job, not an education.

Let’s not insult the intelligence of voters or visa holders about motives. Any approval process based on rules and regulations is open to manipulation — not least an immigration, accreditation and visa system anchored in an overcomplicated federal-provincial framework of overlapping jurisdictions where people fall through the cracks (and seek cover).

Post-pandemic, all that pent-up demand for catch-up visas led everyone to lower their guard, not least the previous immigration minister, Sean Fraser. As his successor, Miller repurposed the term “puppy mills” to describe the fly-by-night immigration and education workers that operate “on top of a massage parlour.”

Henceforth, each province will be assigned work permits in proportion to its population. Ontario will be especially hard hit, as it already fills 51 per cent of them with less than 39 per cent of the population.

The problem has been a long time in the making, but the Ford government had eyes only for traditional puppy mills — the ones that breed puppies — when it announced a crackdown last month: The Preventing Unethical Puppy Sales Act, or PUPS Act, will impose a minimum fine of $10,000 for breeders in the business of abusing animals when it is debated in the legislature next month.

But there’s been no similar alarm or alacrity so far from Ford’s Tories when it comes to outfits that exploit foreigners and dupe our own governments.

While Quebec and B.C. have gotten out ahead of the student visa issue, Ontario allowed problems to fester. On Ford’s watch, an entire industry has arisen — an education-immigration complex akin to the old military-industrial complex that raised alarm bells in America decades ago.

There was easy money — lots of it — to be made off of affluent foreign students, and Canadian universities or colleges understandably wanted a piece of the action. But you can have too much of a good thing when a surge of overseas students overwhelms classrooms, campuses, communities, housing and job markets.

A few universities and most colleges got greedy — counting on high-fee foreign students for one-third or even one-half of their tuition revenues. Meanwhile, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative government got stingy.

Five years ago, Ford’s Tories announced a 10 per cent cut in tuition for domestic students, and have kept them in the deep freeze ever since, while keeping overall subsidies unchanged even as more local students showed up in class. No wonder so many public colleges responded to those foregone revenues by counting on foreign students to make up the difference — leaving them vulnerable to precisely the kind of crackdown coming from Ottawa.

…We set targets, see trends, change course and plug the gaps. This is a country that will always need immigrants, always look after refugees, always benefit from foreign students, always need to learn from its mistakes — federal but also provincial and, yes, institutional — without pressing buttons or yanking chains.

Source: Blame Doug Ford for turning a blind eye to student immigration abuses

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Ottawa to ensure international student cap doesn’t target francophones

2024/01/29 Leave a comment

On the one hand, the feds have correctly made the provinces responsible for study permit allocations by institution, but on the other….

Immigration Minister Marc Miller is preparing measures to ensure that the federal government’s new cap on international student visas does not lead to a sharp drop in the number of francophones studying in Canada.

…Mr. Miller announced the cap earlier this week, saying there would be “no further growth” in the number of international students in the country for the next two years. This would mean cutting the number of new permits issued this year by about 35 per cent, compared to 2023.

…

But the minister’s office said Thursday that he is concerned the cap could lead English-speaking provinces to target francophone institutions, resulting in a disproportionate reduction in the number of French-speaking students in Canada, including those from African countries, such as Côte d’Ivoire.

One option the government is considering is the creation of a separate visa stream for francophone students….

Source: Ottawa to ensure international student cap doesn’t target francophones

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Germany: Would-be migrant workers worried by growing racism

2024/01/29 Leave a comment

Of note:

When German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Labor Minister Hubertus Heil turned up at the Vietnamese-German University (VGU) in Ho Chi Minh City, they were caught by surprise: Screaming students greeted them like rock stars.

Some of those students will go on to work for German companies.

Further acclaim awaited the German political VIPs at the Goethe Institute in Hanoi, where about 6,000 young Vietnamese people per year learn the German language. Seven times that number register for language tests that qualify them for professional training or study in Germany.

At the end of 2023, Germany began implementing its new Skilled Immigration Act, using a point system to lower the obstacles facing skilled workers who want to move to the country.

Since then, high-ranking German politicians have stepped up efforts to woo skilled workers in other countries: Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was recently in the Philippines, for instance, and Development Aid Minister Svenja Schulze is in Morocco. In Vietnam, Steinmeier and Heil signed a memorandum of understanding that improves the regulation of labor immigration to Germany.

Vietnam steps in to help

In communist Vietnam, there is significant interest in working in Germany — where the Vietnamese diaspora has grown to more than 200,000 people. Vietnam is a young country demographically speaking and is thus less threatened by the kind of “brain drain” that affects many other nations. Vietnam’s leadership was also very interested in finding a joint agreement on improving control of labor migration to Germany by its nationals.

The Goethe Institute is important in this regard. For example, it is there that Phuong Phan, 22, is receiving the language training she needs to later work in the hotel and gastronomy industry in Thuringia. The eastern German state is among the first to have signed bilateral contracts with Vietnam.

Phuong Phan said she hopes her training in Thuringia will give her a “practical apprenticeship” while aiding her personal development. Her parents support her in the endeavor, and she combs the internet daily for information on “lovely Germany.”

Recently, however, she came upon something that was not so lovely: reports detailing the xenophobia that is sometimes encountered in Germany, particularly in the east. She does not want to talk about it in her conversation with DW but says the topic has also been dealt with in her language courses.

“Yes, we are watching developments. And gradually, we are starting to have reservations as we take on responsibility for these young people, with regard to their parents as well,” says Nguyen Thi Thanh Tam, a placement officer for Thuringia.

She is currently training another group of young Vietnamese in Hanoi and confirms that the topic of “racism in Germany” has been clearly discussed in recent lessons.

“We want the students to be prepared for unpleasant situations in this regard in Germany,” she says.

400,000 skilled workers needed annually

According to Germany’s Federal Employment Agency (BA), the country has 1.73 million vacant jobs.

Unlike Germany’s campaign to find workers 60 years ago, today’s efforts are not focused on industrial laborers but on highly qualified professionals and people with service-sector experience.

Back then, just under 300,000 people came each year. Today, studies say Germany needs around 400,000 a year.

Recently, Labor Minister Heil traveled to Brazil, India and Kenya to promote Germany as a work destination, and now he’s in Vietnam. “We have improved the conditions with the Skilled Immigration Act; now it’s down to putting things into practice,” he told DW in Hanoi.

Poor coordination

Officially, the Interior Ministry oversees the immigration of skilled foreign workers. But in practice, the responsibilities in this area overlap. One example is the some 350,000 asylum-seekers in Germany, who, if they are rejected, are not integrated into the labor market and many of whom have to leave the country.

More than 17% of people who applied for German asylum in 2023 are now Turks — mostly young, well-educated, liberal-thinking people who wanted to escape from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime. But only one in 10 Turkish asylum-seeks receives protection in Germany. And, at the moment, instead of permitting the rest an opportunity to look for work, Germany orders them to leave the country.

The Foreign Office, on the other hand, is known for its lengthy procedures to obtain a visa — something that also deters skilled workers. The Economy and Labor ministries and the Employment Agency also bear responsibilities, in addition to organizations such as the GIZ development agency and various foundations.

Many companies have their own recruitment and training programs because the bureaucracy prevalent in the public sector is too slow to meet their hiring needs.  Toan Nguyen, the managing director of the TY Academy, which acts as an agency for caregivers who want to go to Germany, complains that there are “too many people to go through and still a lot of obstacles to having qualifications recognized.”

Human trafficking another problem

This makes things difficult for interested skilled workers — and easy for dubious agencies and human traffickers. In Southeast Asia, women are the main prey of the latter, being smuggled into Germany and ending up in low-wage employment or even brothels.

“We must use legal immigration to suppress this practice,” Steinmeier said in Vietnam. The bilateral agreement that has just been signed is meant to provide trustworthy advice about fair working conditions and reputable employment agencies, as well as regular roundtables on work migration involving specialists from both countries.

Germany’s new citizenship law, however, makes the country more attractive to potential immigrants. “In comparison with Japan, where many Vietnamese also migrate but are allowed to work only temporarily, Germany now offers a longer-term perspective,” says Viet Huong Nguyen from the TY Academy.

Xenophobia a deterrent

In light of these positive developments for labor migration, current reports about racist groups in Germany are all the more disturbing.

Labor Minister Heil told DW that no one had spoken to him directly about the issue but that action needed to be taken before it was too late.

“We have to make it clear in Germany that we cannot maintain our prosperity without labor from abroad,” he said.

Vietnamese already living in Germany are also worried. One of them is Huong Trute, whom President Steinmeier invited to accompany him on his Vietnam trip. She has lived in Germany for 40 years and works in the gastronomy sector.

She says she has recently had to answer more and more questions from worried compatriots in Vietnam. After seeing how another group was being prepared for jobs in Thuringian hotels and restaurants at the Goethe Institute, she said: “Honestly? If I had the chance to take these young peopole somewhere else, I would do it.”

She says the developments in Thuringia are coming to a head, and that frightens her.

Source: Germany: Would-be migrant workers worried by growing racism

Filed under Immigration, Racism Tagged with ,

Randall Denley: Ontario is not prepared for a cap on international students

2024/01/27 Leave a comment

Nails it:

The federal government’s decision this week to substantially reduce the number of foreign student visas is the right thing to do, but it undermines the finances of Ontario’s colleges and universities and will hamper their ability to serve the province’s students.

Making Ontario’s post-secondary sector significantly reliant on foreign student tuition was an unsustainable, unwise decision that was sure to end badly. Now it has, and Premier Doug Ford’s government seems unready to respond.

It’s not like federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s move to cut the country’s foreign student visas from 600,000 to 360,000 came out of the blue. The government has been telegraphing it for months.

That wasn’t the first warning the Ford government had. Ontario’s auditor general criticized overreliance on international tuition in both 2021 and 2022. Late last year, an expert panel appointed by the Ford government warned that “Many colleges and universities have passed the point where they could survive financially with only domestic students.”

So far, all the Ford government has done is repeat a second-rate federal Liberal talking point about cracking down on “bad actors,” those being strip mall campuses that licence the curriculum of public community colleges. All with the full knowledge of the provincial government, of course.

There are three bad actors in this story, but none of them operate out of a strip mall.

First, the federal government. It turned foreign student training into a back door immigration system with no limits. Students could work for three years while they studied, then for two or three additional years after that. In all, there are about one million students here on visas now. Only belatedly has the federal government come to admit that flooding the country with unofficial immigrants might contribute to Canada’s housing shortage.

The surge of foreign students worked remarkably well for the Ontario government. Foreign students pay absurd tuitions, as much as $14,300 a year for a college student and $46,443 a year for a university student. According to the Ontario AG, foreign students accounted for 45 per cent of university tuition revenue and 68 per cent of college tuition fees.

The influx of foreign student money papered over the government’s own neglect of the post-secondary sector. In 2019, Ford cut tuition, then froze it. The government’s direct support for the sector has been meagre. The province’s funding per university student is only 57 per cent of what the rest of the country spends, and it’s even worse for college students at 44 per cent.

Finally, there are the universities and colleges themselves. They have overcome inadequate tuition and government funding by milking foreign students for all they are worth, becoming dependent on their tuition fees in the process.

The absurdity of the situation was illustrated earlier this month when international students at Algoma University’s Brampton campus conducted protests after receiving failing marks. One student got right to the heart of the transaction with a sign saying “CAD 26000 are not enough?” One of his compatriots missed the point altogether with his sign, which read “Education is not for sale.” Of course it is, and these students have the receipts to prove it. The university, an obscure Sudbury institution that has set up shop in Brampton to grab some cash, fixed the issue by putting the students’ marks on a bell curve. Smart move. In 2021-22, the Brampton campus generated 65 per cent of the university’s revenue. You have to keep the customers happy.

Unfortunately for the Ford government, the years of pretending none of this was happening are coming to an end. The federal government hasn’t shut off the student tap entirely, but it’s time for Ontario to figure out how to pay for universities and colleges without an ever-increasing flow of foreign student tuition.

The first challenge will be distributing visa quotas, something the province has not done previously. The new visas are based on population, implying that Ontario might get about 130,000 study visas compared to 300,000 in 2023.

Private colleges that were given a veneer of credibility by licensing curriculum from real community colleges should be cut off. Colleges overall will require a significant trim and a return to their mandate of job training for people in their own communities. They can afford it, for now. Foreign student training has been lucrative. In 2022, all but one Ontario college posted a surplus, with the average being $27 million across the system.

Universities are in a different situation. The Council of Ontario Universities says at least 10 Ontario universities are forecasting deficits this year, amounting to $175 million. Next year, the total is expected to be $273 million. A reduction in foreign student tuition will exacerbate that.

This is all a worrisome situation for Ontario students and their parents. The Ford government needs to put a credible fix in place, quickly.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa journalist, author and former Ontario PC candidate. Contact him at randalldenley1@gmail.com

Source: Randall Denley: Ontario is not prepared for a cap on international students

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

French Constitutional Council rejects large parts of controversial immigration law – Le Monde

2024/01/27 Leave a comment

Good summary:

France’s highest constitutional authority rejected more than a third of articles in a contentious immigration bill adopted under pressure from the right, in a decision issued on on Thursday, January 25. The Constitutional Council ruling notably rejected measures toughening access to social benefits and family reunification, as well as the introduction of immigration quotas set by Parliament.

The Council partially or totally rejected 32 articles out of 86 on procedural grounds – ruling that the amendments adopted by Parliament were unrelated to the government’s bill, or “legislative cavaliers.” A further three articles were rejected on the grounds that they were unconstitutional themselves.

The scrapped measures include restrictions to family reunification, access to certain social benefits for non-EU citizens, and the automatic obtention of French citizenship for people who were born and grew up in France. The Council also rejected articles pertaining to student visas and special visas issued for health reasons.

After the Council’s decision, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said the Constitutional Council had “validated the whole of the government’s text,” noting that most of the failed measures were rejected for procedural reasons.

The chairman of the far-right Rassemblement National party, Jordan Bardella, denounced, as expected, a “power grab by the judges, with the support of the president [Emmanuel Macron].” He added: “The only solution is a referendum on immigration.” Eric Ciotti, the leader of the right-wing Les Républicains opposition party which struck a deal with the government to pass a hardened version of the bill, said the Council had “judged based on politics rather than on law.” He called for a constitutional reform.

‘Ideological victory’

The nine members of the Council had been asked to rule on whether the highly divisive text, which caused splits inside President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition, was in conformity with the Constitution. Darmanin, who championed the bill, had admitted that several provisions were “manifestly and clearly contrary to the Constitution.”

Some political observers accused Macron of seeking to pass the buck onto the Constitutional Council. The Constitutional Council registered its displeasure, its president Laurent Fabius declaring it is not “a chamber of appeal against the choices made by Parliament.

Macron also defended the legislation, saying it was needed to reduce illegal immigration but also to facilitate the integration of documented arrivals. On December 20, the day after the vote, the head of state declared that it was “the shield we were missing.” He rejected the idea that the law would enshrine a “national preference” demanded by the RN. But Marine Le Pen claimed it was an “ideological victory.”

Dozens of NGOs slammed what they described as potentially the “most regressive” immigration law in decades. Trade unions and associations called for fresh protests on Thursday, after tens of thousands of people took to the streets across the country at the weekend.

Source: French Constitutional Council rejects large parts of controversial immigration law – Le Monde

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Prousky: Beyond international students: The other problem with Canada’s private education industry

2024/01/27 Leave a comment

Yet another crack in international and domestic students:

…It’s not that hard for Canadian high-school students to buy their seats in the country’s most coveted university programs. For a few thousand dollars, students can enroll at private credit-granting “schools” – usually in strip malls – where they’re almost guaranteed top marks. What these students pay in fees, they can often recoup in scholarship money.

…

The whole thing bears a striking resemblance to the issue of pay-for-citizenship private colleges. At some of these institutions, as many as 90 per cent of students are “no shows,” and in all likelihood are just paying the college for the visa and work permit it affords them. Morally, it’s no different than a domestic student who buys a grade they don’t deserve.

Clearly something beyond a cap on student visas needs to be done to restore the country’s meritocratic values. Shoddy private schools need to be held accountable, regardless of whether they target international or domestic, or high-school or college students.

The problem is, there doesn’t appear to be much data on these private schools, and any available data is wanting. At a minimum, provinces would need to know the acceptance, enrolment, graduation and employment rates at each of these schools. Ontario purports to make this data available, but it’s chock full of missing fields.

There are thousands of these private secondary schools across the country, but do the provinces know how many students attend them and on average how inflated their grades are? If they do, they aren’t sharing this information with universities, and despite auditing these private schools, rarely if ever shut them down.

Some universities have taken matters into their own hands. The University of Waterloo in Southwestern Ontario made headlines in 2018 for its “secret list” of high schools for which they adjust applicants’ grades. But if this effort is going to bring about meaningful change, it requires provincewide co-operation.

Jonah Prousky is a management consultant and freelance writer who focuses on business, technology and society.

Source: Beyond international students: The other problem with Canada’s private education industry

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

‘Total chaos for students’: Canada’s international student restrictions slammed by Colleges Ontario

2024/01/26 Leave a comment

Willful blindness? Should have seen this coming:

Calling the federal government’s new restrictions on international students “a moratorium by stealth,” Ontario public colleges are warning that many thousands of students will soon be left in limbo, their hopes on hold.

The public statement released Thursday by Colleges Ontario, which represents the province’s 24 taxpayer-funded colleges, is the most critical response yet from the post-secondary education sector to changes announced this week by Immigration Minister Marc Miller to rein in a system that he’s previously said had “lost its integrity.”

“The decision has been rushed, resulting in a confusing and damaging early rollout. We urge the federal government to immediately engage with us and our provincial government in a meaningful conversation about the material impacts on students and Canada’s reputation,” said the four-page statement.

“Ontario’s public colleges are very concerned about the attacks on a high-performing, efficient public college system — impacting our reputation with potentially long-lasting negative repercussions.”

Public colleges in Ontario, which have seen an exponential growth of international enrolments over the past few years, had kept silent since October, when Miller started rolling out a series of changes to the international student program in response to public pushback about high levels of immigration and criticisms of its impact on affordable housing.

In December, a new system was put in place to authenticate schools’ letters of admission, followed by a doubling the cost-of-living financial requirement for study permit applicants on Jan. 1 to $20,635, in addition to their first year of tuition and travel costs.

Miller’s reforms

On Monday, after weeks of floating the idea of capping the number of international students in Canada, Miller imposed a two-year cap on new study permits issued in 2024, with an aim of reducing the number issued by 35 per cent from 2023’s level, to 364,000. The cap, however, won’t apply to students for master’s and doctoral programs or in elementary and secondary schools; the intake level will be reassessed in 2025.

Source: ‘Total chaos for students’: Canada’s international student restrictions slammed by Colleges Ontario

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Earnings of one-step and two-step economic immigrants: Comparisons from the arrival year – Statistique Canada

2024/01/26 Leave a comment

Another useful study, highlighting that two-step immigrants had better economic outcomes (annual earnings) than one-step immigrants:

Since the early 2000s, the two-step immigration selection process, through which economic immigrants are chosen from the pool of temporary foreign workers, has expanded rapidly. Previous research indicated that following their landing, high-skilled two-step immigrants had higher earnings than comparable one-step immigrants—those directly selected from abroad. However, an important question that has not been fully examined is whether the earnings advantage of two-step immigrants over one-step immigrants persisted if the two groups were compared from their arrival year rather than the year when they became permanent residents. At that point, neither group possessed any Canadian work experience, eliminating its potential influence on their earnings differences. The results of this study reveal that two-step immigrants consistently had higher annual earnings than their one-step counterparts within the same admission class when the comparison started from their initial arrival year. These earnings differences, although reduced, remained substantial after accounting for sociodemographic differences between the two groups and after 10 years following the initial arrival. Furthermore, these patterns generally held across successive arrival cohorts. The conclusion includes a discussion of the implications of these findings and explores potential reasons for these outcomes.

Source: Earnings of one-step and two-step economic immigrants: Comparisons from the arrival year – Statistique Canada

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

Apportionment & Immigration: 95 Percent of Noncitizen Growth Went to GOP States Since 2019 – Cato Institute

2024/01/26 Leave a comment

Of interest:

In response to a question about restricting immigration, House Representative Yvette D. Clarke (D‑NY) recently stated, “I need more people in my district just for redistricting purposes.” When a Republican member of Congress askedwhether this was the motivation for other Democrats, including President Biden, to oppose more extreme asylum restrictions during a committee hearing at which I testifiedlast week, former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan stated:

I certainly believe it’s probably associated with the decision to overturn the Trump Census rule, so now [immigrants] will be mandated to be counted in the Census. When we reapportionate [sic] seats, it’s going to have an effect.

Although former President Trump did attempt to exclude some noncitizens from the Census count and from House apportionment, multiple courts foundthose efforts to be illegal and unconstitutional. The Constitution is clear: “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state.” But does this provision of the Constitution—whatever its merits—give Republicans a good reason to oppose immigration?

No, the data are equally clear: recent immigration trends are benefiting Republicans in states where they control the legislature and manage redistricting. About 62 percent of the three‐​million increase in the total immigrant population from March 2019 to March 2023 has occurred in GOP states, according to the Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement.

The American Community Survey (with a larger sample size but slightly older data) attributes 60 percent of the growth in the immigrant population to GOP states from July 2019 to July 2022. These percentages are also similar for the Latin American immigrant population growth.

What about noncitizens who might be excluded by a US citizen‐​only census? For them, an overwhelming 95 percent of the increase in the noncitizen population has been in GOP states from March 2019 to March 2023. Eliminating the growth in the noncitizen population from 2019 to 2023 would have cost Republican states 1.2 million people, or about two seats in Congress (the average congressional district has 760,367 people). Figure 1 shows the net increase in immigrant populations for states under GOP and Democratic control.

Table 1 shows the full data from the Current Population Survey’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement for March 2023 and March 2019. The Republican state leading this trend is Texas, which netted 515,970 noncitizens and 833,028 immigrants overall. Other Republican states experiencing significant growth in their immigrant populations include Kentucky (130,061 noncitizens and 146,790 immigrants), South Carolina (102,096 and 157,396), and Florida (102,055 and 178,052). It is certainly likely that these states are attracting immigrants because of their strong job growth.

The argument that recent immigration is boosting Democratic representation in Congress is unsubstantiated. In 2015, I rebutted this same claim about recent illegal immigration. I noted, “Illegal immigration from 2000 to 2010 netted the Republicans about six seats in redistricting. Democrats managed only about 4.5, giving the Republican states yet again more than a seat advantage.” Clearly, immigration has not helped Democrats in terms of apportionment for decades. Yet, this misconception has become so entrenched that the former president tried to unconstitutionally exclude some noncitizens from the Census count.

I have also explained how it is false that Republicans fare poorly during periods when the immigrant share of the population is high. Republicans have controlled at least one chamber of Congress 85 percent of the years when the immigrant share of the population exceeded 10 percent, while not controlling either chamber 83 percent of all other years. This is a staggering disparity that has been completely overlooked in current political discourse. Republicans should not fear immigration based on unfounded political concerns.

Source: Apportionment & Immigration: 95 Percent of Noncitizen Growth Went to GOP States Since 2019 – Cato Institute

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , ,

HESA: What Comes Next: Ontario (the hugely problematic provinces) [international student caps]

2024/01/25 Leave a comment

The insightful Alex Usher on the impact of provinces, with Ontario the focus:

Ontario is, not to put too fine a point on it, a shit show. My impression is that the Ford government, which has been throwing gasoline on the international student fire ever since it got into the office, mainly so it could avoid having to actually spend over its own money on post-secondary education, is in no way equipped policy-wise to deal with the mess it has just been handed.

The first policy question to be answered before getting to the issue of caps is: what the heck to do about the public-private partnership colleges currently strewn around the GTA? As it is, with the graduates denied access to the post-graduate work visa program, it will be difficult for any of them to stay in business, since satisfying this demand is largely their reason for being. That would be brutal on a couple of levels: first on the colleges themselves who would have to teach out their existing students with essentially no money coming in, and second on their parent public colleges who rely on the margin between per-student tuition and per-student payments to the PPPs in order to keep operating under a system in which per-student funding is just 44% of what it is in the other nine provinces.

At least conceptually, there’s another option: What if the public colleges bought out their private partners and operated these institutions directly? The province might well say no—college catchment areas in theory have meaning, and this kind of arrangement would undermine those catchment areas (which is precisely why they all went in the PPP direction in the first place). And net surpluses would be lower if all the staff at these colleges suddenly joined the college unions. It might not be a super-lucrative prospect, but it might be better than the alternative. I could see some institutions trying it.

But being able to make that decision requires you to know what provincial funding is going to look like. If the province comes in with a bailout package—particularly for northern colleges—then the need to keep pushing on those GTA campuses might be lessened. Alternatively, many of those PPP colleges may now move more quickly towards seeking their own degree-granting status through the Post-secondary Education Quality Assessment Board (PEQAB) and start offering their own degree-level programs, escaping the problems created by Monday’s announcement.

(You see how many moving pieces there are here? It’s going to be wild to watch this all work out.).

Only once you work out the PPP piece can you sensibly make decisions about the rest of the system. If the baseline numbers include the PPPs, then everyone is going to take a big hit on their numbers. If the baseline excludes the PPPs, then the hit to the rest of the system will be greatly alleviated. How that gets distributed across the system is still the big unknown. Will it be done equally across all institutions? Will there be a steer to the colleges rather than universities, or vice-versa? How will stand-alone private institutions be treated (Northeastern is the big one to think about in this category). We have no idea. It’s all an enormous mystery. And with a moratorium on visa processing until the provinces figure all this stuff out, there are a lot of very anxious international student divisions out there.

Source: What Comes Next

Reading this article in the Globe, appears British Columbia more advanced in its thinking and planing.

British Columbia and Ontario are planning to crack down on “bad actor” private colleges that they say take advantage of international students, after Ottawa announced a plan to cap foreign study visas for two years.

Source: B.C., Ontario planning crackdown on ‘bad actor’ colleges preying on international students

Filed under Immigration Tagged with , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →