Canada’s international education sector has seen significant upheaval in the last year, with more change expected under the newly elected Trudeau government. As CBIE‘s annual report shows 10% growth in incoming international students, its research manager Janine Knight-Grofe digs down into the data and talks about sector trends.
The PIE: What is your role at CBIE?
JKG: I’m the research manager at CBIE and we have a research division that’s led by me and guided by our VP and public policy and so I determine the research priorities and the research plan for the year.
The PIE: And CBIE’s annual report was your brainchild, is that right?
JKG: Yes, absolutely. It came from our Board of Directors and our president really wanting us to be able to fill a role for our members, getting more information on international education from a Canadian perspective out there, and can we have some way that we bring it all together.
“I feel that without our students really having a global experience then we can’t really say that we are global”
This was my proposal: that we do a report annually, where we bring together the wonderful international student survey that we do. We used to do that every five years but now we do that every year and bring together those stats with the stats that we have from Citizenship and Immigration Canada on international students coming in with the other aspects of internationalisation that we want to look at: education abroad, internationalisation at home, more in depth than the immigration piece on study permits, work permits. Things our members are really keen on.
We always hear about international students and the numbers. Before our report, Citizenship and Immigration Canada used to something called ‘Facts and Figures’, so they put that out there, the number of international students but it never came with any context. So that’s what we try to do, we try to put those numbers with some context and with some ambitions for Canada in the areas. Without a National Education Ministry, we try to be that voice and speak for international education at that level.
The PIE: Were there any surprising findings in this year’s report?
JKG: I think noteworthy, and it is not surprising because we know this, is just the very few number of Canadian students that go abroad for exchanges or any kind of education abroad, service learning, internships. In Canada we are a very multicultural society, especially in our cities, and we like to think that we are quite global in that way, but I feel that without our students really having a global experience then we can’t really say that we are global just because our communities are internationalised.
“Our role as the national body is to say that there is so much more to international education”
So that is really something that led us to write a new chapter this year called ‘Trends to Watch’ and one of the things we talked about was internationalisation at home. Given that all students cannot be internationally mobile, internationalisation is important for all students, so the only way to really get at that is by infusing internationalisation into the curriculum, into the campus. And we think that should be K-12, university, college, polytechnic and throughout educational institutions.
The PIE: Does that have to do with so few Canadian students going abroad?
JKG: This number is not changing, it has not changed, it’s not changing at a college level, it’s not changing at the university level, not a lot of Canadian students are studying abroad, sure we could have more funding, we can have more scholarships and that would be fantastic, we should do it, but having said that we are not going to capture 80% of the students through mobility so let’s really make headway on internationalising at home. We’ve got a lot of potential there.
The PIE: On the inbound side, do you think there is an over reliance on China and some of the other big markets for international recruitment?
JKG: I think that that has been a challenge for institutions. There are institutions that need to bring in more and more students as part of their bottom line, that is part their strategy. Having said that I think that the principles that the Internationalization Leaders Network launched and at our AGM our Board Chair, Patrick Deane, was saying that at his institution he has made this mandatory reading and he thinks that all institutions should make this mandatory reading.
“Financial imperatives should not underpin international activities”
One of the principles is that financial imperatives should not underpin international activities, and I think that more and more of the institutions are feeling that that is a philosophy they would like to adopt. Everybody has their financial realities, having said that, I think that their financial realities are not necessarily underpinning their activities but they’re supporting their activities. On the supporting I think they are able to do more perhaps, in internationalisation generally by having some of those funds and having that support.
There is kind of that push-pull and there is a difficult balance to strike and it is more the ethics of internationalisation throughout institutions. At least we see it with our member institutions at CBIE, that they are trying to conduct internationalisation in an ethical way.
The PIE: The report shows a there is real appetite for permanent residency and it is up this year, right?
JKG: Yes, the number of students who would wish to stay in Canada, to apply for permanent residence, is at 51%.
Students transitioning directly to permanent residence are up this year, that figure is still lower than it was 10 years ago but that transition is not the most common pathway for international students, so I think it is an interesting number to look at but it doesn’t necessarily represent the full picture.
The PIE: What are the more common routes to permanent residency?
Often students go from student to post-graduation work permit to perhaps Canadian Experience class to permanent residency. The direct student to permanent resident is not the most common because applying for permanent residency usually requires work experience and experience they may not have directly as a student. So it is encouraging to see that the number is going up, so that means more students are having that kind of experience that they need to apply directly, but it doesn’t represent the full picture.
“The International Education Strategy has flaws but it was a milestone in the field”
The PIE: Is there quite a lot of optimism around the new Trudeau Cabinet?
JKG: Yes, absolutely. I think that generally education institutions have a certain welcoming mindset which it sounds like it is reflected in the new government. Having said that, the International Education Strategy was a first of its kind initiative and that was done by the Conservative government and that was done under Stephen Harper. It has flaws but it was a milestone in the field. Provinces have had their strategies but we’ve never had a federal strategy. It sounds like the new government will continue in that trend and expand and build on what the Conservative government had started.
The PIE: What do you think the flaws of the IES are?
JKG: One of the main things is that we feel that it focuses quite a bit on international students inbound and we’ve advocated for this and we’ve talked about it and we’ve mentioned it quite a bit. So our role as the national body is to say that there is so much more to international education and these are the reasons why it makes sense to do it as a holistic approach.
“CIC has mentioned that quite a number of international students have received invitations to apply”
The PIE: What has been the impact of the new Express Entry programme?
JKG: The new immigration programme, Express Entry, puts international students in a pool with other individuals who are applying for permanent residency. At first we weren’t necessarily sure that this would be beneficial to international students, it creates increased competition where they did usually have a more direct path to permanent residency. For the first couple of rounds international students did not seem to have the requisite points to get the offer to apply. So they get the invitation to apply for permanent residency based on the number of points that they get on this Express Entry system.
All of the economic immigration programmes all go through this new Express Entry programme, so everyone gets into the pool. Those with a certain amount of points get an invitation to apply, but what CIC has done, which has been quite good, in every round is, they’ve changed the point system quite a bit, reflecting what they saw in the previous cohort, to ensure that they are capturing international students for example, different kinds of experience.
So it has been a dynamic, flexible, changing system, and CIC has mentioned that quite a number of international students have received invitations to apply and have met that minimum point threshold in the latest rounds.
The PIE: Would you say then that Express Entry is a positive development for international students?
JKG: It is good to see that CIC is changing and listening to what’s being said and ensuring that international students are still coming through as smoothly, because the policies need to be aligned.
At one end we have the International Education Strategy saying citizenship and immigration will work with this strategy to bring in more international students, but then if not being able to stay through the Express Entry system is proving detrimental to them, then again we are speaking out of two ends of our mouths. I feel like that has been changing so we feel positive about the Express Entry programme.
The PIE: And finally, lots of international educators recently have been talking about the importance of involving faculty in internationalisation. What is CBIE doing to facilitate that?
“A lot of the things staff in international offices would like to do, the faculty are not on board with it, they don’t necessarily see the rationale for it”
JKG: What we are trying to do is bring in those voices a little bit more into CBIE. Traditionally those involved in the conference are those who are practitioners, they’re working with international students, they’re working on international programmes, partnerships, study abroad but we haven’t had faculty as much involved in our organisation.
We’re doing that in two ways, one is a new professional learning community for research, that would be specifically targeted to researchers and professors who are doing research in international education. But we’re also bringing in some of the more senior voices we have an Internationalization Leaders Network.
We hear at CBIE, a lot of the things we’d like to do, or staff in international offices would like to do, the faculty are not on board with it, they don’t necessarily see the rationale for it, so those are the two ways we are really trying to get that rationale out there into the institutions, not just in our heads and it is a great thing to do.
