British Columbia is one of Canada’s international education success stories. Randall Martin, executive director of the British Columbia Council for International Education (BCCIE) talks about the province’s achievements, goals and how it could be a model for national level activity.
The PIE: You’re a provincial organisation with an international outlook. Tell me more about BCCIE’s operations.
RM: We’re a small organisation with 10 full-time staff and usually one or two co-op students. Our successes have been such and the recognition of the importance of the sector has been such that just over two years ago the government turned us into a Crown Corporation to legitimise our role.
“We have been seen as leaders in the country in terms of international education practices”
We represent five distinct communities not members. So that’s 25 public post-secondary institutions, over 300 private and career training colleges, over 150 language schools, over 300 private or independent K-12 schools and over 60 school districts.
The PIE: A lot of people say that as it goes in British Columbia so it goes in the rest of Canada, is that true?
RM: We have been seen as leaders in the country in terms of international education practices and part of this is driven by the fact that we have quality education institutions and geographically we’re a very popular destination which has encouraged government to support us more than other provincial jurisdictions might be supported.
We are the only province in Canada with any entity like BCCIE, with the one minor exception which is Edu Nova which has a different mandate. We are funded entirely by government and support them in their implementation of their provincial international education strategy. Every other province tries to run international education from within government. So we’re more nimble to react quickly and able to do things that government may not be able to do. Because of that I think we are seen as leaders in a number of fields.
The PIE: British Columbia launched its own international education strategy in 2012 that preceded the federal strategy. Two years in how is it going?
RM: There were a number of targets and goals. The most visible was the premiere’s ambition to attract 50% more international students by 2016-2017. Even the premiere suggested it was ambitious but with the growth that we’ve experienced with pretty much every one across the board in our different sectors I think we’ve got a good shot of meeting that. But the strategy also looks at creating more opportunities for our students to go abroad and curricular change within institutions.
“Canadian students are quite comfortable here… There are the financial restrictions upon travel but we also haven’t yet developed a culture of study abroad”
The PIE: And the CBIE has just called on government to increase scholarships for Canadian students to go overseas. What are your thoughts?
RM: Canadian students are quite comfortable here. You drive 3,000 miles and you speak the same language and you go to the same Tim Horton’s. There are the financial restrictions upon travel but we also haven’t yet developed a culture of study abroad.
Certainly we’re trying to encourage it. Diversity programmes, internships, international co-op placements, service learning. There’s also the trend of the short-term two week trip which I really don’t support though because I think you just check a little box on your resume rather than having any sort of real cultural engagement.
One of the things we’re trying to do in British Columbia is not just count the students going abroad but trying to ensure that you have a number of unique individual experiential learning opportunities. Rather than saying “we sent 10% of our students abroad” you should be counting every single experience as valuable, making sure that one student has entered a programme where you’ve monitored that and ensured they’ve been able to engage and learn something from the local culture.
The PIE: Is there a tension between public and private institutions in British Columbia?
“I think people are starting to realise more and more the high quality we have at the top end of our private institutions”
RM: When we first started engaging on our mission about 7 or 8 years ago there was much more of a divide. We may have played a part in this but certainly I think people are starting to realise more and more the high quality we have at the top end of our private institutions. There are some top-notch private institutions out there in the K-12 and post-secondary levels and because they’re not getting a penny from the government they have to address consumer needs more immediately. So in terms of this nexus between industry, government and institutions I think the privates are a lot more receptive to that.
There remain tensions but I think they’re disappearing rather than growing. We’re all fishing in the same pond and are part of this symbiotic enterprise in education – K-12, to post secondary to language schools, public, private – they’re all just students.
The PIE: Where are the holes in that symbiotic cycle of student recruitment?
RM: It depends on a student’s home country. If a student is from Korea their life-long dream is an American degree so maybe they’ll get their English level up in a Canadian high school but then they would rather go to a small Midwestern college in the US than UBC because they will have an American degree. There’s some flows that you can’t change culturally. But every time that you have a student having to make a decision about “do I stay or do I go?” that’s when you’re going to lose them. Our goal is to try to create more seamless transitions between the language sector, K-12 and post-secondary. Once you’re in grade 10, you’ve got a certain mark and you’re guaranteed entrance into this university or college and you don’t have to do much to do that.
We have to do a better job of creating the pathways between our communities. With 14,000 international K-12 students in the province, we should be promoting on-shore recruitment. Establishing those pathways is something we’re working toward in British Columbia.
The PIE: Tell me about the off-shore activity of British Columbian providers.
“We have to do a better job of creating the pathways between our communities”
RM: We have the largest off-shore programme in Canada. The lion’s share of those schools are in China, with a small number in Egypt, Qatar, Korea and Thailand. Over the last three or four years it became a bit of a wild west in terms of new applications coming in and people wanting to start up off-shore schools. There really is a sincere attempt to maintain the reputation for quality in British Columbia and I think the ministry felt that quality was being compromised and they were losing a handle on that. So they put a moratorium on offshore school development and came in last year with some fairly stringent rules around inspections, quality, certification of teachers, library holdings, process for applications, etc. The ministry has still not relaxed its opinion on this so they’ve still not made any final decisions yet.
I think if used properly off-shore education can be a great feeder into Canadian post-secondary schools. There are a few places where we should be to raise the profile of a BC education – India, Indonesia, Nigeria.
The PIE: British Columbia was the first province to submit its list of providers for the International Student Programme. How did you make the decision?
RM: It was easy because of the Education Quality Assurance scheme. Only institutions with EQA approval were on the list.
The PIE: How does the scheme work?
RM: If you are EQA approved the government assures quality instruction and guarantees consumer protection. If you have EQA, should the school close down the government guarantees a full refund or replacement in a partner institution in a similar programme.
The PIE: A government-backed tuition protection scheme is pretty impressive.
“It would be nice to have a patchwork of quality assurance schemes across the country where we could then say nationally Canada has this quality assurance”
RM: We’re the only government that does that in Canada. It’s a good model and even if they’re not identical it would be nice to have a patchwork of quality assurance schemes across the country where we could then say nationally Canada has this quality assurance. I think on a certain level it’s understood that should happen but again you’ve got to get 13 provinces and territories to sit down and agree upon it.
The PIE: There have been some impressive growth statistics coming out of British Columbia – an 180% increase in Indian students over the past four years, for example – do you have a limit?
RM: There are limits. Some of our universities say “we’re full” but continue to spend money on recruitment and pathways. So there are more capacity issues in the big cities like Vancouver but fewer across region. I think we can anticipate this continued but not double digit growth. Everybody in the world talks about the best and the brightest. Just because more students are able to travel abroad to study doesn’t mean the talent pool has also grown. I think we have to realise that we’ll get some very good students to BC but we’ll also get, like me, some very average students to British Columbia and that’s ok. If they decide to stay on they’ll be an integral part of the community.
