The major education associations in Canada have formed a consortium for international education marketing to strengthen their efforts to bring the best and brightest international students to Canada. The agreement was signed in Ottawa on Tuesday by the five associations that represent the vast majority of institutions. Canada is facing strong marketing campaigns by Britain and Australia and needs to be able fight back more efficiently, the associations say. Several years ago, the Canadian government and provincial authorities began working with colleges and universities to develop a Canada brand strategy, and members hope this consortium will take that effort to a new level.
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One Response to Canada’s Education Associations Unite in Push to Recruit Foreign Students
raymond_j_ritchie - July 1, 2010 at 12:02 am
Recruitment of Full-Fee Paying Foreign Students is perversely attractive to universities. I have no problems with overseas students on scholarships. Personally, I have never had a bad experience with them.Some experiences from Australia:(a) Political correctness (in my own experience Canadians have a bad dose of it) prevents objective assessment of the costs and benefits of full-fee paying foreign student programs. They instantly become a sacred cows immune to review or oversight. Any voices of dissent or doubt are crushed like maggots. Then everyone is shocked when a scandal, seeming to come from nowhere, blows up in their faces. Such scandals become monotonous after a decade or two of such fun-and-games.(b) Full-fee foreign student programs are certainly not the cash-cow governments and university admins think they are or more accurately try to con you into believing they are. Full-fee foreign student programs are very expensive to run in terms of money, time and labour. I doubt universities even break-even on them: certainly there is little trickle down money from them. There are large financial and political risks and the “market” can disappear overnight.(c) The worst abuses of Foreign student programs in Australia arise from the Education Agents who cream off about 10% or more of the fees in return for recruiting students. They get the money whether the student is suitable or not and whether or not their documentation is forged. Avoid the use of Education Agents like the plague. If Canadian universities are not prepared to set up an office of their own in China or India or organise a consortium to do so they are asking for trouble.(d) The Australian government has admitted to finding that 30 to 70% of education documents presented by full-fee paying overseas students are forgeries. I wonder if it has something to do with those Education Agents?(e) The target students are mainly interested in vocational courses such as economics, business students, commerce or IT. They are not interested at all in a liberal arts degree of the North American type. If you teach biology, chemistry or history you will almost never have them in your classes. The enormous social and cultural gains to universities of such programs are rubbish.(f) Australian universities have a habit of organising special “parallel” courses for the overseas students to cater for their “special needs”. Everyone knows they are nothing of the kind but you are not allowed to say that. The students often graduate after having hardly ever even spoken to Australian students and their english is no better than when they got off the plane.(g) The quality of full-fee paying foreign students is often appalling (see (c, d, e & f) above).(h) Universities try to pretend that full-fee foreign student programs are not mixed up with immigration issues. That silly-ostrich game causes trouble for both universities and government.(i) Canada has a geographic problem we do not have. After getting a Canadian passport many will simply move to the USA.