Canadian university delegation on recruitment drive in India

Before long, hundreds of thousands of Indian students will fan out across the globe in search of the best higher education. Unless something changes, many won’t think twice about Canada.

But in a rare banding together of Canadian universities, 15 of their presidents are travelling to India on Monday to try to raise Canada’s profile as a desirable destination, part of drive to draw more, and better, foreign students to our schools.

These top administrators trumpet the benefits of importing students in economic and diplomatic terms, but also say global students improve the dynamics in Canadian classrooms. And they stress the need to deepen research and business ties between the two countries.

The seven-day mission takes the delegation of presidents – the largest to undertake such a trip – to Delhi and Pune for a series of broad-based discussions with education, business and government leaders. They hope to build on last summer’s agreement between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Indian counterpart, Manmohan Singh, to develop synergies between universities.

“We are being received at the highest levels,” said Paul Davidson, president of the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, which is organizing the India trip.

Individual Canadian universities have long sent representatives to India, but even as York University prepares to open one of the country’s first foreign campuses, those visits have yet to leave an indelible maple-leaf mark.

“There's been no critical mass and therefore Canada doesn't register strongly in India as an outstanding destination for Indian students,” said Stephen Toope, president of the University of British Columbia.

A growing middle class means many more Indians can afford to travel for higher education. In 2008, 160,000 Indian students studied abroad, but just 3,000 of them chose Canada, according to a report from the AUCC.

The number of foreign students in Canada rose by 10 per cent to 90,000 last year, from just 25,000 in 1995, and accounted for a $6.5-billion economic footprint, said Mr. Davidson. But that is still only a fraction of those lured by the United States, Britain and Australia.

“I think it's fair to say we're lagging behind,” said University of Saskatchewan president Peter MacKinnon.

Parvathi Subramanyam, 20, is a third-year business student at the University of British Columbia who hails from Bangalore, India. When she chose the West Coast over the London School of Economics, many back home questioned why she had passed up the U.S. and Britain.

“Once I went back to my high school, and explained what I had been learning, then people saw my position,” she said.

For some schools, foreign students are key to solving a demographic problem. The University of Saskatchewan is facing declining numbers of high-school students, a predicament shared by many Atlantic schools that threatens current enrolment levels. And Carl Amrhein, provost at the University of Alberta, warns “we [in Canada] under-produce PhD students at the elite level.”

But not everyone is convinced this push toward rapid expansion is the right approach. Jim Turk, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, acknowledges the value of having international students, but with many other schools bursting at the seams, he thinks “the desire to pack in the international students” has another source.

“I fear that all the talk about international students is really a talk about dollars,” he said.

At Queen’s University, president Daniel Woolf concedes money is one consideration, as provincial grants are worth less than they once were and domestic tuition can only be raised so much. The AUCC calculates average international tuition in Canada at $15,674.

“So we are simply following other jurisdictions – Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. – in tapping into this market,” he said, adding that he thinks most universities are “a long way off” from feeling a capacity crunch.

Dr. Mackinnon disputes the perception that foreign students are “cash cows,” however, and says in many cases international fees only cover costs.

The scholarship UBC offered to Ms. Subramanyam was an attraction, but she chose Canada primarily because Indian and British programs were too specialized, and she wanted a wide range of choices. But she only knew Canada could provide them because its universities came to visit.

“In our high school, we had a lot of Canadian universities come and represent themselves,” she said.

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