Why foreign students choose Canada
Universities across the country find an increase in international applicants
Canadian universities may have a more international feel this fall.
Enrolment of international students will be sharply higher, universities say, and the incoming freshmen include large numbers of high school students from the United States. With the increase coming during the first year of a contentious presidency, there’s plenty of talk about the trend being an obvious reaction to U.S. President Donald Trump.
“The so-called Trump effect is real when it comes to enrolment in Canada,” said Alan Shepard, president of Concordia University in Montreal. “Applications from international students for this coming fall’s semester have surged.”
But it’s not that simple. While plenty of students who have chosen Canada for higher education cite the political climate in the United States, admissions officers and students say economics remains the main motivation.
Maddie Zeif, 18, a high school student from Sunderland, Vt., said costs in Canada were cheaper than in the United States and were comparable even to in-state tuition at the University of Vermont. She’s going to the University of British Columbia in the fall.
“At UBC, I will be right in a city, at a very large university, right on the ocean, an hour from Whistler,” she said in an email, referring to the popular Canadian ski resort, “and I will be paying almost the same amount as my in-state tuition without factor- ing in any financial aid yet.”
Besides the cost and the political climate, students also say they were attracted by affordable health care, relative safety and a more relaxed atmosphere in Canada. Students from outside North America also point to the ease of immigration to Canada.
With about one million international students within its borders, the United States is still the leader in international education. Canada’s international student population, though, surged 92 per cent from 2008 to 2015, reaching more than 350,000, according to the Canadian Bureau for International Education.
Final figures for this year’s application season are not yet available. But Canadian university officials say the early numbers suggest that Canada will be educating many more international students than ever this fall, particularly from the United States.
At Ryerson University, for example, the number of international undergraduates, including from the United States, who have confirmed that they will attend in the fall is up nearly 50 per cent over this time last year.
University of Toronto officials said the enrolment of students from the United States for this fall had doubled from last school year, with a “yield” — the percentage of accepted students who commit to attend — of 25 per cent compared with about 20 per cent last year.
“We’re going to see record numbers of students from the U.S.,” said Ted Sargent, a vice-president at the university, Canada’s largest.
Officials at U of T said they saw a jump in enrolments from other countries, too, with an increase of 75 per cent from India and more than 60 per cent from the Middle East and Turkey. Smaller universities such as Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax, N.S., said the number of applications from the United States had more than doubled this year.
Even though international students pay a higher rate, tuition is still generally lower in Canada than at comparable U.S. universities.
Also, the Canadian dollar’s weakness relative to the U.S. dollar gives students headed to Canada an instant discount of about 26 per cent.
Megan Ludwig, 23, from Prather, Calif., graduated from the University of Nevada with a bachelor’s degree in ecohydrology, which studies the interaction between water and ecosystems. But for her master’s degree, she decided on Canada. The economics were compelling.
“Canadian tuition is half the price per semester or less than most U.S. universities and scholarships for master’s positions are less competitive and more widely available,” Ludwig wrote in an email. She said she landed a stipend that was nearly double any of the offers she received in the United States.
Nancy Gorosh, 19, of Houston, just finished her freshman year at Concordia. Last year, she was choosing between Concordia and Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, on Long Island. Gorosh said her tuition and fees at Concordia next year will be about $12,400 (U.S.) a year; Hofstra would have been about $44,000.
Politics is on the minds of students choosing Canada for college, but their concerns are more nuanced than a simple dislike of Trump.
“I don’t want to spend my college years worrying about what’s going to happen if I need an abortion,” Zeif said. “I don’t want to spend my college years worrying about what happens if I get caught with a little weed in my bag.”
Ankit Saxena, a 23-year-old engineer from New Delhi, will apply to graduate programs in the fall. He said Trump’s policies were one of many factors leading him to focus on Canada over the United States. He plans to apply to the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo and the University of British Columbia, among others.
“Racial discrimination is becoming a big problem, and it’s really scary to hear about an Indian getting shot in the U.S. every week,” Saxena said.
Some students say the visa process for entering the United States is onerous, especially considering the uncertainty about how regulations might change. More than half of the international students in Canada plan to seek permanent residency, according to the Canadian international education bureau.