Be smarter about post-secondary education

As is our wont these days, we can switch into apocalyptic mode very quickly in this country. The latest example is post-secondary education which is now, we are told, facing an existential crisis because the feds are curtailing international enrolment. Campuses might be closed. Whole universities might go under. What to do?

First, we should set the table with some data. The Stats Can data on enrolment is lagged a bit with 2022/2023 as the most recent year for comparable data between provinces and we know from other sources that 2023/2024 and 2024/2025 showed substantial growth in enrolment again. But for level setting this is the data we have.

In the past 20+ years we have seen solid growth in university enrolment - up 59% between 2001/2002 and 2022/2023. The only province to see a decline was New Brunswick - a significant 21% drop. Ontario enrolment is up 71%, Alberta up 81% and British Columbia up 142%. PEI and NL up nearly 60%. Nova Scotia enrolment is up by only 18% but as you can see has led the country consistently for decades.

New Brunswick, Ontario and BC saw the biggest swings - BC went from 10th to 4th in university enrolment adjusted for population size, Ontario from 7th to 2nd. New Brunswick, unfortunately, went from 2nd to 10th.

I have said and continue to believe that PSE (university and college) could be an import export industry for Canada. In fact, one recent study found that PSE is Nova Scotia’s second largest export industry behind tires. So, instead of demonizing the sector, we should set the conditions under which PSE could thrive and what the benefits would be.

Conditions:

There must be adequate housing and support services (e.g. health care) to support the student population.

International students should absolutely be allowed to work (and their spouses) unless local conditions preclude it (e.g. high unemployment).

International students should not be promised (or inferred) that studying in Canada is a guaranteed pathway to permanent residency. It could be but the basic math doesn’t work. You can’t have 1.5 million international students/spouses/children and assume they will all cram into the 400,000ish PR admissions each year. I suspect a large share could find their way to PR if we were attracting the 500,000/year PRs that I think will be needed (1.2% of the population) in the years ahead. Remember the natural population growth rate in Canada is negative (more deaths than births).

International students must have the economic wherewithal to study in Canada. We have seen far too many issues -from under-reported student suicides to 10 people crammed into one 2 bedroom apartment. I was working in Ontario last year and heard the story of a college professor telling his international students they could use the local foodbank and dozens showed up that very day. Canada has to be a positive environment for international students.

There should be at least some effort to align PSE to workforce demand. We have seen huge spikes in demand for certain occupations (nursing, trades, food services, etc.) and only a modest response from PSE and mostly from the college sector.

If these conditions are in place, I don’t see why Canada couldn’t support at least a million international students or more each year.

The benefits:

Canada needs export industries. Our trade balance has been worsening for years and there are voices looking to throttle the country’s top export industry - oil/gas/refined oil products. Post-secondary education is a high value export industry.

Having the largest relative talent pipeline in the world would be a huge benefit in the competition for global business investment. Again, Canada’s international investment position has been worsening for nearly a decade.

Presumably, at the university and college level, we could attract even more research-oriented talent to help boost our international standing when it comes to R&D.

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So, let’s figure this out. For those wetting the bed about Canada’s massive population growth in the past couple of years, the biggest source was international students/spouses/children. They are not here permanently -by definition.

I just google international tourists to Canada and found this: “In 2023, approximately 27.2 million international visitors travelled to Canada.” This means that at any given time there are millions of temporary people in Canada just driving around and taking pictures of the Hopewell Rocks. Are you wetting the bed about this? Are you demanding we kick out all the temporary tourists?

I’m just glad Statistics Canada didn’t add tourists to the temporary population. Imagine the impact on GDP per capita.

I’m so disheartened by Jason Kenny’s views on this. I won’t get into details you can google yourself -but here is one of Canada’s former champions for immigration and now distributing the same old tropes.

Yes, we saw a surge and many communities were not ready. Yes, there have been abuses of students. Yes, there were shenanigans particularly at the college level.

But that doesn’t mean we should kills the goose that laid the golden egg.

This is just another instance in this country where our experts are trying to boil down a big idea to a binary choice. This is not binary. If we do it right, a large and growing PSE system will be beneficial to all Canadians.