Historically, student visas have been freely issued at will to any student who was accepted to a university or college program. This wasn’t an issue until about five years ago.
A lot of our laws, regulations, and policies were written assuming people would act in good faith. Unfortunately, that’s no longer good enough, and as a result, many corporations and provincial governments have started to take advantage of it, which has caused a lot of problems in Canadian society.
Two years later, the federal government released its international education strategy, a profoundly economic document that made almost no reference to curricula (except as something to be sold for profit to institutions in other countries), but did provide detailed targets for increasing the recruitment of international students, both in absolute terms and by diversifying the source countries to better serve Canada’s foreign affairs agenda (Government of Canada, 2014). This first national strategy document signalled the incorporation of post-secondary education into Canada’s economic
policy regime as a major export, and in that sense is a milestone in the commodification of education in Canada.
Historically, student visas have been freely issued at will to any student who was accepted to a university or college program. This wasn’t an issue until about five years ago.
A lot of our laws, regulations, and policies were written assuming people would act in good faith. Unfortunately, that’s no longer good enough, and as a result, many corporations and provincial governments have started to take advantage of it, which has caused a lot of problems in Canadian society.
That isn’t consistent with the reporting I’ve seen.
The federal government termed post secondary education one of our most valuable exports in the early 2010s and increased promotion of Canadian universities abroad. The concerted push both advertised to students, and made it easier for foreign students to work in Canada (to support their education):