World’s smallest violin here, turns out junk courses need to be cut and the industry is crying to the media to get their money tap turned back on.
Small & local institutions should serve the needs of the areas workforce not spam out useless business & other junk diplomas.
Our provincial community college has high demand trades booked out for over a year wait list. Limited resources should not be going to train admin assistants to use excel on study permits so recruiters can get paid, while in demand trades are critically under resourced.
Up until 2021 we had a local institution that had lower entry requirements that let people who didn’t get a good first chance at life to go back to school for 70-80 averages for grades. Well a major university bought them out, jacked up entry requirements and started advertising overseas.
“Canada’s global reputation is indeed in flux, noted Meti Basiri, co-founder and CEO of Kitchener, Ont.-based ApplyBoard, a platform that connects international students, recruiters and post-secondary institutions.”
It’s almost like there’s an entire industry built around exploiting foreign students in diploma mills….
To be clear our educational institutions should absolutely remain open to foreign students but we need to stop treating them like cash cows and not institutions meant for education.
Education needs to be equitable, accessible and not location restricted by how much rent you can’t afford to pay. The liberals new rules are good first steps.
UnintentionalWipe on
The fact that colleges, universities, businesses, etc… are freaking out about this shows that the entire system was created to exploit international students. And mess things up for the rest of us. I know some will blame the students, but the system was in place to exploit them and fill them up with false promises for cheap labour (for businesses) and easy money grabs (for colleges, universities and landlords)
Throwaway6393fbrb on
Have the same amount of sympathy I would have about an article
“New anti MLM scam laws are causing turmoil among social marketing managers”
The worse it is for these scammers the better
IntheTimeofMonsters on
CBC is on a roll. There is another article today referencing the Indian government’s released figure on deaths of their citizens studying in Canada. Despite being told that this was some kind of unspecificed, but clearly moral, failure of Canada’s to protect the vulnerable, other than making it clear that these deaths were all somewhat ‘natural’ (health, traffic accidents, etc…), there was no indication at all that, statistically, the numbers were unusual given the population’s size.
It’s a bizarre example of the sub-genre of white, middle-class journalism from an employer supported by state subsidy, virtue scolding Canada about (in this case) absolutely nothing.
Some days I can almost support defunding…. almost.
Rees_Onable on
John Tibbits and Conestoga College are likely the ‘worst offenders’ of this scam.
“Leopold Koff, the union president representing faculty, librarians and counsellors at Conestoga, had publicly called for the retirement of Tibbits, 80, in February, after the college received widespread disapproval for its unchecked recruitment of international students. The students’ high tuition fees assisted the college in reaching a $252-million surplus in 2023-24, but also resulted in misery for many of those students because the college didn’t provide enough housing. Students crowded into apartments or begged strangers to rent them a room in their homes. It also worsened the housing crisis for everyone.
Instead of showing remorse, Tibbits called another college president a “whore” in an adrenalin-spiked interview when his recruiting practices were challenged. A lot of people thought he would soon be gone after that.”
Boo hoo. If your business model is predicated on exploiting international students for money you’ll get no sympathy from me. You’re school deserves to go under if it can’t survive without international students
Universities should exist to serve Canadians, as an educated populace is crucial for our success as a nation. Even if the program is less practical whether it be Canadian studies, gender studies or philosophy still offer valuable education and shouldn’t be sacrificed just to save money. Universities should be about higher learn not trying to constantly increase profits. Partially the provinces are at faults as they’re cutting or at least not increasing funding to universities/colleges which is in part causing the post secondary schools to turn to exploiting international students. A lot of it is just plain old greed tho as the post secondary institution makes more money the school executives can pocket more money and create all sorts of administrative jobs that do *checks notes* something? It’s extremely frustrating.
It’s mind boggling that the provinces refuse to increase funding in post secondary schools despite there being tangible benefits and a historic precedent in funding them. Historical provincial governments understood this, and it’s frustrating in particular to see conservative governments not funding them when historically they were champions of education funding (for example see Bill Davis’ term as premier of Ontario where he oversaw the rapid expansion of post secondary schools and their funding).
My own University (or former university now that I’ve graduated) has been creating all sorts of new programs, and certificate course designed attract international students. They’re also going crazy with expanding the Durham satellite campus in Oshawa as it’s more attractive to international students cause it’s in the GTA. Despite the huge increase in international student admission the students and faculty are benefiting from it. No new dorms or residence buildings are being built despite the dire housing shortage, programs with low international enrollment are facing cuts, and as tenured professors retire they’re being replaced by contract professors who’ll never get tenure or the stability of a permanent job here despite contributing the same amount of work to the school as the old tenured prof they’re replacing, profs who are given literal janitors closets to be their “office” and the lost goes on. The only noticeable change is that the administrative bloat is rapidly increasing. The money gained from the exploitation of international students is literally just not being reinvested into the students and faculty and is instead being wasted on trivialities and bloat.
Rant over. Tldr post secondary schools should be about education, they need to stop exploiting international students, reinvest the money in a tangible way for students and faculty, and the provinces have to start funding them.
Competitive_Sky_4513 on
Not sure if I am missing, but Honorable minister promised for significant changes. Has the government done anything to curb the LMIA issue ??
KingRabbit_ on
#
>Canada’s reputation faltering
>Canada’s global reputation is indeed in flux, noted Meti Basiri, co-founder and CEO of Kitchener, Ont.-based ApplyBoard, a platform that connects international students, recruiters and post-secondary institutions.
>We’d been the first choice of international students for a decade, according to Basiri, who himself came to Canada from Iran to study in 2011. However, Canada’s since fallen to third, after the U.S. and the U.K.
>
Ah CBC, always getting the neutral, unbiased opinion of an ‘expert’ to underscore its reportage. What would we ever do without it?
Oh, and here’s an academic viewpoint, to add a vague air of authority to the proceedings that also helpfully doubles as a broad accusation of implicit racism on the part of the Canadian people:
>Dale McCartney, an assistant professor at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, B.C., who researches Canadian international student policy.
>”Every one of these policy announcements now is just, like, being a little bit meaner … a way to be a little bit crueler to international students — make their lives just a little bit harder, to make it a little bit harder for them to become citizens.”
These articles are like a recipe.
Odezur on
Music to my ears. I hope they DO suffer the impacts of this after exploiting international students and abusing their desired loopholes for PR for profit.
the_mongoose07 on
It’s remarkable how CBC consistently takes the side of foreign students and the post-secondary “institutions” exploiting them for profits.
We cut back on their hours? A CBC story about how students find it so expensive here and how they need to work (despite coming here to study)
Their Visas are expiring? A CBC story about how their dreams are shattered due to Canada’s cold-heartedness.
We scale back on numbers? A CBC story about how our education systems will crumble to dust.
If people are wondering what side of the issue the CBC is on, it isn’t that of the Canadian public.
matt95110 on
Screw them, they aren’t worried about their reputation, they’re worried about not making insane amounts of money by exploiting international students.
MysteriousBreeze on
Provincial governments have gone all in on this for decades because it alleviates some of the province’s expense and makes a half-assed business model for post secondary education.
MacFukes on
If they want to make profit from selling education to foreign students every such institution should be required to house them in purpose-built residences and provide private medical care. Anything else shift the burden on to Canadian taxpayers without the benefit of the tuition profits.
rathgrith on
Well then colleges and universities and cut the staff bloated from your budget.
My god is the CBC is blind here. No wonder there are so many calls to defund
Mean-Cauliflower8566 on
I spoke with a technical college instructor on this subject.
Meetings were had, and the issue was clear. There were not enough students coming through the school pipeline to maintain the amount of programs the school wanted to provide.
It was a shrewd business decision, to bring in foreign students to fill the classrooms, that way no one would lose their job. It’s clear to me the schools got greedy, and went all in to make even more money.
They traded the wellbeing of their communities for profit and greed. ‘Educators’ ought to have known better. There is nothing about education that makes one moral, or ethical. Just look at the business executive class.
So what do we do to solve this? I’d start with putting a lot of these schools out of business.
Mithspratic on
The rest of the country has ought to do what BC has announced and cap the amount of international students at any institution at 30 percent. No reputable institution would be higher than that currently, it only serves to punish diploma mills.
WillSRobs on
Almost like years of provinces using international students to avoid investing tax dollars into Canadian educstion causes problems when the feds cut off the gravy train.
People wont care because all they hear is immigrants but I’m sure all off them will be of would be pissed if they couldn’t afford a high education.
Wonder how many would support actually funding education to the same extentent.
dekuweku on
The article should be clear that some,/many colleges and universities profited from international students and do not know how to stop.
The headline make it sound like these colleges and universities are victims of pernicious government policy. They are hardly victims
MutaitoSensei on
Uh huh?
Look, something has to give here. We either reduce immigration so more housing is available, or we rein in the monstrous greed of investment companies buying housing and renting it for an insane amount. It can’t keep going up like it is right now without salaries and the minimum wage soaring overnight.
19 Comments
World’s smallest violin here, turns out junk courses need to be cut and the industry is crying to the media to get their money tap turned back on.
Small & local institutions should serve the needs of the areas workforce not spam out useless business & other junk diplomas.
Our provincial community college has high demand trades booked out for over a year wait list. Limited resources should not be going to train admin assistants to use excel on study permits so recruiters can get paid, while in demand trades are critically under resourced.
Up until 2021 we had a local institution that had lower entry requirements that let people who didn’t get a good first chance at life to go back to school for 70-80 averages for grades. Well a major university bought them out, jacked up entry requirements and started advertising overseas.
“Canada’s global reputation is indeed in flux, noted Meti Basiri, co-founder and CEO of Kitchener, Ont.-based ApplyBoard, a platform that connects international students, recruiters and post-secondary institutions.”
It’s almost like there’s an entire industry built around exploiting foreign students in diploma mills….
To be clear our educational institutions should absolutely remain open to foreign students but we need to stop treating them like cash cows and not institutions meant for education.
Education needs to be equitable, accessible and not location restricted by how much rent you can’t afford to pay. The liberals new rules are good first steps.
The fact that colleges, universities, businesses, etc… are freaking out about this shows that the entire system was created to exploit international students. And mess things up for the rest of us. I know some will blame the students, but the system was in place to exploit them and fill them up with false promises for cheap labour (for businesses) and easy money grabs (for colleges, universities and landlords)
Have the same amount of sympathy I would have about an article
“New anti MLM scam laws are causing turmoil among social marketing managers”
The worse it is for these scammers the better
CBC is on a roll. There is another article today referencing the Indian government’s released figure on deaths of their citizens studying in Canada. Despite being told that this was some kind of unspecificed, but clearly moral, failure of Canada’s to protect the vulnerable, other than making it clear that these deaths were all somewhat ‘natural’ (health, traffic accidents, etc…), there was no indication at all that, statistically, the numbers were unusual given the population’s size.
It’s a bizarre example of the sub-genre of white, middle-class journalism from an employer supported by state subsidy, virtue scolding Canada about (in this case) absolutely nothing.
Some days I can almost support defunding…. almost.
John Tibbits and Conestoga College are likely the ‘worst offenders’ of this scam.
“Leopold Koff, the union president representing faculty, librarians and counsellors at Conestoga, had publicly called for the retirement of Tibbits, 80, in February, after the college received widespread disapproval for its unchecked recruitment of international students. The students’ high tuition fees assisted the college in reaching a $252-million surplus in 2023-24, but also resulted in misery for many of those students because the college didn’t provide enough housing. Students crowded into apartments or begged strangers to rent them a room in their homes. It also worsened the housing crisis for everyone.
Instead of showing remorse, Tibbits called another college president a “whore” in an adrenalin-spiked interview when his recruiting practices were challenged. A lot of people thought he would soon be gone after that.”
https://www.therecord.com/opinion/columnists/john-tibbits-cant-just-disappear-overnight-from-conestoga-college/article_d2e3e813-7d8f-5cfa-9014-a5a1c6e92efc.html
Boo hoo. If your business model is predicated on exploiting international students for money you’ll get no sympathy from me. You’re school deserves to go under if it can’t survive without international students
Universities should exist to serve Canadians, as an educated populace is crucial for our success as a nation. Even if the program is less practical whether it be Canadian studies, gender studies or philosophy still offer valuable education and shouldn’t be sacrificed just to save money. Universities should be about higher learn not trying to constantly increase profits. Partially the provinces are at faults as they’re cutting or at least not increasing funding to universities/colleges which is in part causing the post secondary schools to turn to exploiting international students. A lot of it is just plain old greed tho as the post secondary institution makes more money the school executives can pocket more money and create all sorts of administrative jobs that do *checks notes* something? It’s extremely frustrating.
It’s mind boggling that the provinces refuse to increase funding in post secondary schools despite there being tangible benefits and a historic precedent in funding them. Historical provincial governments understood this, and it’s frustrating in particular to see conservative governments not funding them when historically they were champions of education funding (for example see Bill Davis’ term as premier of Ontario where he oversaw the rapid expansion of post secondary schools and their funding).
My own University (or former university now that I’ve graduated) has been creating all sorts of new programs, and certificate course designed attract international students. They’re also going crazy with expanding the Durham satellite campus in Oshawa as it’s more attractive to international students cause it’s in the GTA. Despite the huge increase in international student admission the students and faculty are benefiting from it. No new dorms or residence buildings are being built despite the dire housing shortage, programs with low international enrollment are facing cuts, and as tenured professors retire they’re being replaced by contract professors who’ll never get tenure or the stability of a permanent job here despite contributing the same amount of work to the school as the old tenured prof they’re replacing, profs who are given literal janitors closets to be their “office” and the lost goes on. The only noticeable change is that the administrative bloat is rapidly increasing. The money gained from the exploitation of international students is literally just not being reinvested into the students and faculty and is instead being wasted on trivialities and bloat.
Rant over. Tldr post secondary schools should be about education, they need to stop exploiting international students, reinvest the money in a tangible way for students and faculty, and the provinces have to start funding them.
Not sure if I am missing, but Honorable minister promised for significant changes. Has the government done anything to curb the LMIA issue ??
#
>Canada’s reputation faltering
>Canada’s global reputation is indeed in flux, noted Meti Basiri, co-founder and CEO of Kitchener, Ont.-based ApplyBoard, a platform that connects international students, recruiters and post-secondary institutions.
>We’d been the first choice of international students for a decade, according to Basiri, who himself came to Canada from Iran to study in 2011. However, Canada’s since fallen to third, after the U.S. and the U.K.
>
Ah CBC, always getting the neutral, unbiased opinion of an ‘expert’ to underscore its reportage. What would we ever do without it?
Oh, and here’s an academic viewpoint, to add a vague air of authority to the proceedings that also helpfully doubles as a broad accusation of implicit racism on the part of the Canadian people:
>Dale McCartney, an assistant professor at the University of the Fraser Valley in Abbotsford, B.C., who researches Canadian international student policy.
>”Every one of these policy announcements now is just, like, being a little bit meaner … a way to be a little bit crueler to international students — make their lives just a little bit harder, to make it a little bit harder for them to become citizens.”
These articles are like a recipe.
Music to my ears. I hope they DO suffer the impacts of this after exploiting international students and abusing their desired loopholes for PR for profit.
It’s remarkable how CBC consistently takes the side of foreign students and the post-secondary “institutions” exploiting them for profits.
We cut back on their hours? A CBC story about how students find it so expensive here and how they need to work (despite coming here to study)
Their Visas are expiring? A CBC story about how their dreams are shattered due to Canada’s cold-heartedness.
We scale back on numbers? A CBC story about how our education systems will crumble to dust.
If people are wondering what side of the issue the CBC is on, it isn’t that of the Canadian public.
Screw them, they aren’t worried about their reputation, they’re worried about not making insane amounts of money by exploiting international students.
Provincial governments have gone all in on this for decades because it alleviates some of the province’s expense and makes a half-assed business model for post secondary education.
If they want to make profit from selling education to foreign students every such institution should be required to house them in purpose-built residences and provide private medical care. Anything else shift the burden on to Canadian taxpayers without the benefit of the tuition profits.
Well then colleges and universities and cut the staff bloated from your budget.
My god is the CBC is blind here. No wonder there are so many calls to defund
I spoke with a technical college instructor on this subject.
Meetings were had, and the issue was clear. There were not enough students coming through the school pipeline to maintain the amount of programs the school wanted to provide.
It was a shrewd business decision, to bring in foreign students to fill the classrooms, that way no one would lose their job. It’s clear to me the schools got greedy, and went all in to make even more money.
They traded the wellbeing of their communities for profit and greed. ‘Educators’ ought to have known better. There is nothing about education that makes one moral, or ethical. Just look at the business executive class.
So what do we do to solve this? I’d start with putting a lot of these schools out of business.
The rest of the country has ought to do what BC has announced and cap the amount of international students at any institution at 30 percent. No reputable institution would be higher than that currently, it only serves to punish diploma mills.
Almost like years of provinces using international students to avoid investing tax dollars into Canadian educstion causes problems when the feds cut off the gravy train.
People wont care because all they hear is immigrants but I’m sure all off them will be of would be pissed if they couldn’t afford a high education.
Wonder how many would support actually funding education to the same extentent.
The article should be clear that some,/many colleges and universities profited from international students and do not know how to stop.
The headline make it sound like these colleges and universities are victims of pernicious government policy. They are hardly victims
Uh huh?
Look, something has to give here. We either reduce immigration so more housing is available, or we rein in the monstrous greed of investment companies buying housing and renting it for an insane amount. It can’t keep going up like it is right now without salaries and the minimum wage soaring overnight.