The Potential of Canada’s International Education Strategy: Evidence from the “MIT of the North”

2024/09/14 Leave a comment

Excellent case study and analysis by Mikal Skuterud and others that challenges Canada to adopt a strategic approach to international students and education focussing on quality, not quantity:

UWaterloo is best known for its academic programs in computer science, mathematics, and engineering, which has earned it the moniker the “MIT of the North.” Evidence that UWaterloo’s international student graduates struggle in Canadian labour markets relative to their Canadian-born counterparts graduating from the same academic programs with similar academic standing provides a direct test of the skill underutilization hypothesis. The evidence also offers critical lessons on whether policy efforts to realize the full economic potential of international students are best directed at augmenting employer hiring behaviour through DEI initiatives, for example, or at improving the attraction and selection of international talent and promoting skill formation, including language training.

Our main findings are:

1. Roughly 70 percent of UWaterloo’s international students transition to Canadian permanent residency (PR), twice the rate of international students at the national level. There is little difference in the transition rates of UWaterloo’s students with the highest and lowest academic achievement and little evidence that policy efforts since 2008 to ease foreign students’ Permanent Residents transitions has impacted UWaterloo graduates, unlike at the national level. This suggests these policies have primarily affected the immigration outcomes of lower quality graduates, including community college graduates.

2. Canadian-born students at the 95th percentile of the skill distribution leave Canada after graduation at twice the rate of Canadian-born students at the 5th percentile. While the best international students are twice as likely to outmigrate as the best Canadian-born graduates, there were five times more Canadian-born graduates of UWaterloo between 2005 and 2021. This implies that Canadian students have contributed more in absolute numbers to “brain drain” in recent years than international students at UWaterloo.

3. The average post-graduation earnings of UWaterloo’s international students not only exceed Canadian-born graduates of UWaterloo, but also Canadian-born university graduates nationally. Moreover, the earnings advantage of UWaterloo’s international student graduates has increased over time as the economic returns to degrees in technology and engineering, where UWaterloo’s foreign students are heavily concentrated, have increased relatively more.

4. Comparing students graduating at the same time from the same academic programs with similar academic standing, we find evidence of disparities in international students’ average earnings after graduation. The earnings gaps are largest for East Asian, especially Chinese-born graduates. They are also concentrated among academically weaker students and appear to be entirely explained by deficiencies in English language proficiency. The results provide no evidence consistent with the common belief that immigrants’ skills are underutilized in the Canadian economy. In fact, we find that measured skills are more important in determining the labour market earnings of foreign-born than Canadian-born graduates.

Overall, our analysis points to the potential of Canada’s International Student Strategy to boost economic growth. However, given the extent to which student outcomes vary by program of study and institution, realizing this potential requires prioritizing quality over quantity in foreign student admissions. Unfortunately, the Strategy has become preoccupied with growth, especially in the college sector.

We recommend redirecting the Strategy in two directions. First, IRCC needs to offer international students a single transparent pathway to economic-class immigration that relies exclusively on an enhanced Comprehensive Ranking System to select candidates with the highest expected future Canadian earnings. The success of the CRS in predicting immigrants’ future earnings can be enhanced significantly by adding applicants’ fields of study, school identities, and post-graduation earnings to the set of criteria used.

Second, Canada can do more to influence the choices that the world’s best and brightest students make themselves about where to study and settle after graduation. Options include using targeted tuition subsidies to attract exceptional prospective foreign students to the country’s top university programs in technology and engineering and income tax schemes to incentivize the highest quality graduates to work in Canada after graduation.

Source: https://clef.uwaterloo.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/CLEF-074-2024.pdf

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How did a Toronto terror suspect enter Canada? Immigration minister offers first details

2024/09/12 Leave a comment

Note of realism in terms of border security but will still raise questions about vetting of international students and where extra vetting may be warranted:

…“I think our American partner would be highly disappointed to see elected officials firing their mouths off about and speculating about this case and its outcome,” Miller said. “We owe it to Canadians to keep them safe, to actually let the process unfold.”

Miller also said that borders cannot be made 100 per cent secure.

“No one can pretend and stand honestly in front of you and say that a well determined actor can’t come to this country, and that’s why we have the security apparatuses that we have in this country,” Miller said.

Source: How did a Toronto terror suspect enter Canada? Immigration minister offers first details

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Tens of thousands of international students who spent years finding a pathway to permanent residency are out of options

2024/09/10 Leave a comment

Major and inhumane policy failure, whipsawing international students between government encouraged expectations and subsequent government imposed reality:

…That same year, a series of policy reversals and changes began to take place. Ottawa stopped granting extensions to PGWPs and noted that granting permanent residency to temporary residents in bulk was a one-time emergency pandemic measure. The government also abruptly changed its criteria for permanent resident (PR) selection in the Express Entry system – a score-based application process that determines eligibility for permanent residency. It began prioritizing French speakers and people with job experience in health care, skilled trades, agriculture, transportation and STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – fields as opposed to those with Canadian-specific education and experience.

“Nobody knows the probability of a successful permanent residency transition now because the PR selection system has become highly non-transparent and unpredictable,” explained Mikal Skuterud, an economist at the University of Waterloo. “What we do know is that the government is not going to grant extensions to expiring visas so there will now be many, many people in situations where they either remain in Canada undocumented or leave.”

There is no precise data that reflect exactly how many foreign graduates currently holding PGWPs will see their visas expire this year. The Naujawan Support Network – a labour advocacy organization based in Brampton, Ont. – estimates that approximately 70,000 PGWP holders will not obtain permanent residency before their visas expire and be forced to leave Canada in 2024 and 2025.

Prof. Skuterud estimates that approximately 131,000 permits could expire this year – if one were to assume that most PGWPs issued had three-year durations. But he noted that an exact figure was tough to determine….

Source: Tens of thousands of international students who spent years finding a pathway to permanent residency are out of options

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Canadian universities see international students’ enrolment down 45 per cent after rule change. ‘The system is just hanging on’

2024/09/07 Leave a comment

Would be nice if IRCC would provide a colleges/university breakdown in its level data series:

Canadian universities are expected to see international student enrolment dropping by at least 45 per cent from last year, a more drastic decline than the 35 per cent intended cut in study permit applications announced by the federal government earlier this year.

Although the measures introduced by Ottawa were meant primarily to rein in the runaway growth of study permit holders in the college sector, Universities Canada said the early numbers from its members don’t even come close to the targeted ceiling.

With Ottawa’s consultation underway to set its 2025 immigration levels, including targets for international students, the advocacy group representing 97 universities across Canada is pleading with the government not to impose further cuts to study permit quotas or make additional changes to the rules of the post-graduation work permits.

“The system is really just hanging on,” Universities Canada president and CEO Gabriel Miller said in an interview Thursday. “If it takes another blow in the next few weeks, it could be fatal.”…

Source: Canadian universities see international students’ enrolment down 45 per cent after rule change. ‘The system is just hanging on’

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These international students are still waiting for study permits from Canada with just two weeks before classes begin

2024/08/20 Leave a comment

Not great:

…Following changes announced by the federal government in January to rein in the number of international students, there has been an overall increase in student visa backlogs and processing times due to the confusion over how study permit quotas would be allocated and the lack of infrastructure for provinces to issue the newly required attestation letter for applicants. 

The wait times to get a decision for international applicants shot up from nine weeks in January to a peak of 15 weeks in May; processing times for those applying from inside Canada went from four weeks to 14 weeks in June and now 11 weeks, according to data from ApplyBoard, an online marketplace for learning institutions and international students.

The Immigration Department has stopped publishing the overall outside Canada wait times in favour of providing the information based on the country where an application is processed. Currently, the estimated processing time for China is eight weeks….

Source: These international students are still waiting for study permits from Canada with just two weeks before classes begin

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Canada to grant a select group of international students permanent residence upon graduation with pilot program

2024/08/20 Leave a comment

Another pilot that will create further expectations:

Ottawa is launching a new pilot program to attract and retain Francophone international students, providing them with a direct pathway for permanent residency in Canada after graduation.

The initiative is touted as a flagship measure of the new Francophone immigration strategy meant to boost the French-speaking population outside of Quebec, which has declined since 1971 from 6.1 per cent of the Canadian population outside the province to just 3.5 per cent today, threatening the country’s bilingual national identity.

Source: Canada to grant a select group of international students permanent residence upon graduation with pilot program


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Desai: Canada’s poor relations with India underscore short-term thinking and failures

2024/08/19 Leave a comment

Good commentary on Canada-India relations and international students:

…Short-sightedness on student visas 

Relations have also been strained over international students in Canada – the majority of whom come from India. 

Earlier this year, the Indian High Commissioner to Canada warned that Indian students granted visas to study in Canada are often “duped” by post-secondary institutions, sometimes with tragic consequences. 

Further, the CBC found that the types of programs to which foreign students are being steered do not align with our labour market needs. 

This has foundational roots in Canada’s inability to co-ordinate policies at all levels of government and with other key stakeholders. 

International students have historically buoyed Canada’s economy. Their higher fees solidified the balance sheets of many post-secondary institutions and they filled labour market needs, especially in value-add roles. 

The 2008 decision allowing international students to apply for permanent residency was rational, given Canada’s demographic challenges in the context of a highly competitive global economy for top talent.

But, misalignment between the provincial and federal governments has led to disastrous results. 

The provinces – responsible for accrediting post-secondary institutions – saw the short-term economic benefits of international students and began rubber-stamping the approval of questionable schools. This essentially created a loophole for young foreigners to access Canadian permanent residency. 

The federal government – responsible for immigration – did not study the implications of these provincial decisions and aggressively increased their target numbers, especially for student visas, despite the lack of options for both quality education and short-term housing, which created social friction. 

The ongoing lack of alignment to long-term labour market needs puts the broader system and our economy at risk. 

These diplomatic, immigration and intergovernmental policy failures have had implications for Canadian businesses looking to diversify their export markets, especially to India which represents a large and growing market with increasing demand for our goods and services. 

They have also impacted the number of Indians considering emigrating, especially those whom Canada and other countries dependent on immigration for economic growth most covet – students, entrepreneurs and professionals. …

Source: Canada’s poor relations with India underscore short-term thinking and failures

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Effect of the international student cap by country

2024/08/15 Leave a comment

Further to my earlier analysis of the overall effect on post-secondary study permits below, I have also done an analysis of the effect by country on study permit applications and study permit issued.

For the country analysis, the public tables do not have a breakdown by study level, so the tables below include all levels (post-secondary study permits form 80 percent).

Starting with applications (finalized applications). Despite an overall decline quarter to quarter, there is considerable variation among source countries with a number of countries showing an increase 2024 to 2023 quarter. This may reflect some processing time lags:

In contrast, study permits issued has an overall consistent pattern of decrease in study permits among all countries save Saudi Arabia. The most striking decline is India, almost 100 percent, but Nigeria declined by over 50 percent, with Philippines and Turkey close behind. The greater reduction of Indian students likely reflects some of the negative stories by or about Indian students and their frustrations and struggles, all covered in Indian as well as Canadian media.

In short, the implementation of the cap has resulted in an overall decline in the number of applications and study permits issued, and thus is achieving the policy and program goal (web interest in getting a study permit has also declined).

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International Students Numbers Starting to Decline

2024/08/10 Leave a comment

Given some of the simplistic analysis of the number of study permits issued in a number of publications, I thought the following table would be instructive. There is always a time lag in policy implementation and the caps on international students were introduced in January of this year as shown in the table below.

So while there was a slight increase for the first half of this year, the quarterly number highlights the shift: Q1 showed a year-to-year increase of 34.3 percent whereas Q2 showed a decrease of 21.4 percent.

So a plea to journalists writing about international students and other immigration numbers, look at both the totals and trends for a more accurate picture. Always happy to respond to any questions.

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Fake letter leaves Nigerian international student without status, asked to leave Canada

2024/08/02 Leave a comment

Yet another example of unscrupulous consultants and lack of real time due diligence. Appears that about 2.4 percent of all applications include fraudulent letters:

…The new letter of acceptance verification process began on Dec. 1, 2023. Before it began, the department acknowledged many students “sincerely” came to Canada to study, but some who knew about the fake letters had “no intent” of studying.

Between that day and July 1, IRCC said it has caught 9,175 letters that were never issued by a Canadian school.

Those 9,175 letters were out of a total of 361,718 letters checked by IRCC and the schools.

These letters “may be an indicator of fraud,” IRCC wrote in a statement, but each one will need to be checked by an officer.

The department declined to make anyone available for an interview, and agreed to answer questions only by email.

It said it is “focused on identifying culprits, not penalizing victims” of fraud.

In response to questions about Akinlade’s case and why IRCC believes she knew about the fake letter, IRCC pointed back to its officer’s decision based on the “balance of probabilities.”

“Applicants are responsible for all the information on their application,” IRCC wrote, noting that Akinlade had an opportunity to address the officer’s concerns.

Onus on the applicant

Sandhu said it’s not clear to her exactly why IRCC believes Akinlade knew the letter was fake.

“If we’re going off of hunches, I feel that most officers can be very skeptical when it comes to applicants that claim they were victims of a rogue agent.”

Sandhu acknowledged that Canadian immigration rules put the onus for everything in the application on the applicant.

“Even though you may have used an agent, you are still supposed to be aware of everything,” she said.

Akinlade said she has learned a “lesson” about finding a reliable agent to help her, but she believes if IRCC looks again at her case it will find she was not complicit in the fake letter.

Her lawyer is submitting her humanitarian application to IRCC in the coming weeks but the application does not give her any right to stay in the country, and it is not clear how many months it could take to process.

“I really want to be investigated,” she said, adding that the whole experience has been “traumatic” for her family.

“This is not something I pray for my enemy to experience.”

Source: Fake letter leaves Nigerian international student without status, asked to leave Canada

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