The Shadowy Business of International Education
thewalrus.ca
thewalrus.ca
And your home institution still gives you the degree itself, so there's no complications there either.
Let's be honest, in most cases you can replace the word 'study' with 'party'. That's why you end up with "some of the best experiences in people's life", as you say.
In many cases, students do not have the required language level to follow and understand courses, so if they bother to show up, the content flies over their head while they are busy decoding the form. Sometimes they do not even speak a word of the language. In some cases, they follow dumbed down courses in a third language (Globish) with a teacher who can hardly speak it, so they never learn the local language, and they learn some bad English.
There were some rough edges, such as untranslated terms but it isn’t as hopeless as you claimed.
I have always been fascinated by the immigrant story, and in Canada I feel there is evolution happening. Like the story mentioned it seems these young, desperate and motivated individuals represent the ideal worker for Canadian employers/government. I have encountered uber drivers, retail workers and tech proferssionals, all from this demographic and they have so much grit. This feels different the previous generation (my parents) were they filled mostly underskilled labour but had childern who mostly went on to more skilled professions.
I just hope some form of the Canadian dream is still viable. My parents were able afford a house and have kids who did well in school, to be honest that was thier saving grace both in terms of happiness, retirement and giving them a sense of pride and accomplishment for thier many years of struggle. I know some of my peers fear if they are able to acoomplish even that (even with thier 6 figure incomes) I can't imagine what these newcomers are facing.
Wait, how did the student get a visa without really being enrolled?
There's a lot of money at play and pissed off students if they don't do well.
Definitely a weird 'business' if you view education as something that's merit based as opposed to bought.
It’s also largely about shadowy “agents” that are in foreign countries recruiting the students and helping them with the process (for a cut).
Universities have become all about moneymaking and will happily accept students who lack the prerequisite knowledge for a course, setting them up for failure when they inevitably struggle with the material. Lecturers get pressured to dumb down course material and pass students who haven't demonstrated adequate abilities in their coursework.
I used to teach computer science back in Australia and saw a lot of this first hand. Part of the reason I left was because I didn't feel comfortable being part of this dirty system.
> According to critics, aggregate recruiters allow institutions to avoid any accountability for the actions of the agents representing them. “It eliminates the link between the colleges themselves and the agents,” says agent Earl Blaney. “The schools are now not even responsible or connected to these agents, but they’re the ones selling the school.” It’s a $21 billion dollar industry, he says, with hardly any rules.
> ApplyBoard says it vets all its recruiters, rejecting 46 percent of applicants. Approved agents are then trained through online webinars and an interactive course. But institutions seem to understand the potential for abuse that comes with working through aggregators. In the past, Langara refused to allow its agents to work with subagents. “The reason for that is because then we lose the control of who these people are, how they’re representing the institution,” says Van Dam. Last year, despite those qualms, Langara signed an agreement to work with ApplyBoard in what Van Dam describes as a trial period. In theory, there’s nothing stopping an agent that Van Dam rejected yesterday from signing up with ApplyBoard and sending kids to the college soon afterward.
I did some research, my girlfriend paid about $4k USD to a similar company in China for help with filling our her visa application and reviewing admissions essay to a university in Canada. Although now she regrets spending that much as she can do all that stuff on her own when she came here. Students can pay to that range or even more which is why Applyboard can raise $300+ million despite having only served 200k students.
International students as an "industry" really does exist.
But international students are much easier for universities to get, for both top universities in Vancouver, and small towns further away. For the later, they are almost like a lifeline.
Certainly, if I’d been forced to pay that rate, it’s likely I wouldn’t have been able to attend. Or more likely would have needed significant student loans which would have drastically changed decisions I got to make without them. Neither scenario seems like a particularly just outcome if the only difference is an accident of geography.
Politically, this is a hot button topic because politicians are accountable to their constituents and since some amount of public funds are used on post secondary education, there’s a sense of entitlement. You can even see that in the “performance based funding formula” that Ford is moving Ontario to. And every price hike was always met with a wave of complaints when I attended resulting in tuition freezes. Trying to advocate for the rights of non-Ontarions doesn’t win you political points but it doesn’t remove the unjustness from the story (especially since that foreign funding is actually acting like a large subsidy for in-province students)
I was an international student in Canada 2010-2012, and Singapore 2007-2009.
The one in Canada, my parents sent me to had a reputation of a somewhat of business degree mill despite a good name, and rankings.
I studied business administration there, and can tell it was useless. I never used any of the skills I learned professionally.
Experience of an expat student in such places:
Extreme pass rates, with few "hard" programmes to save the face.
By Canadian own standards, the academic ethic, and discipline was so, so, but tolerated, with tacit understanding that a lot of "foreign student friendly" courses exist for such sole purpose.
There was only 1 real native (in a sense being born there) Canadian citizen out of a class of 24. Everybody else was either completely foreign, recent naturalised immigrants, PR holders, and children of people on investment immigration programs.
You pay 3 times the Canadian rate.
And yes, my parent used a shady "agent" as well, who very visibly been communicating with uni higher ups.
Well, that's often the case with regular, honest studies too. Most people who work after the equivalent of a Master degree never use chemistry, biology, or post-high-school mathematics in their job (the list is not exhaustive).
(I just mean to say that this shouldn't be taken as a single definite criterium ; when you add it to the rest in the bigger picture, it can make sense however.)