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Race for foreign students
The Canadian Embassy in Manila will have its first Study in Canada Fair in the country this week with a hope of increasing the number of Filipino students who will pursue academic opportunities there.
Canadian Ambassador Christopher Thornley said they are hoping to double the just over a thousand Filipino students in Canada.
Thornley said there are 240,000 foreign students in Canada, and that “Filipinos are a very small number of that.”
“So we don’t have a target number yet and I think we need a few years of doing this to establish some patterns to decide what would be realistic targets but we’re starting from a very low base, quite frankly,” he said.
According to data from the Canadian Embassy, of the 239,121 international students in Canada as of December 1, 2011, only 1,196 were from the Philippines, an increase from 953 in 2010. In 2002, only 324 Filipinos students were registered there.
Filipino students who entered Canada in 2011 numbered at 637, according to data from the Canadian government, an increase of 178 from 2010’s 459. Only 142 students were registered in 2002.
“The number’s quite low, though. I mean, that’s why one of the reasons why we’re doing this (study fair), we’d like to see it become much higher,” Thornley said.
“So I don’t think it’s unrealistic to look at at least doubling our numbers within the short term,” he added.
Representatives from around 17 Canadian schools will be at the study fairs—at the Fairmont Hotel in Makati on Jan 25th and at the Marriott Hotel in Cebu City the next day—to talk about opportunities to study in Canada at the K-12, college, and university levels.
Thornley said his country has institutions that can provide good education.
“You don’t have bad schools in Canada,” he said. “You’ll find some that are a little better than others, or some that are well-known than others, but they’re all consistently very good.”
International students have been beneficial to Canada. In 2011, for instance, more than 239,000 students contributed around $8B in revenue to the country and contributed to the employment of 86,750 jobs, according to the embassy.
Thornley assured Filipinos that they will be able to adapt to Canada should they decide to study there, citing its hospitable and safe environments.
The Philippines is the top source country of immigrants to Canada, which is home to around 667,674 Filipinos.
The search for more Pinoy students comes as a report said that Canada needs to do more to attract foreign students as Asian nations like the Philippines and Singapore ramp up efforts to grab the lion’s share of this multi-billion dollar industry.
Statistics Canada data examining the number of international students attending university in Canada show international interest in Canadian institutions has flatlined in recent years. From 1992 to 2003, the overall percentage of international students at Canadian universities jumped nearly three percentage points, from 4.2 to 7.1 per cent. But from 2003 to 2008, that number levelled off, growing by less than half of a percentage point over six years.
Canada’s international reputation as a leading study destination can be improved, according to the report.
International students spent a total of $8-billion in Canada during 2010, up from $6.5-billion in 2008.
Countries such as India and China – Canada’s top suppliers of international students – are trying to reverse the brain drain. In 2011, India increased higher education spending by 30 per cent while the Chinese government aims to enroll 500,000 international students by 2020, twice the number it now hosts and more than it sends abroad.
At the same time, the Philippines, dubbed the world’s “budget English teacher:” is getting increasing attention because of the country’s relatively cheap access to education compared to other English-speaking nations.
A BBC report, written by Kate McGeown, noted the surge in the number of foreign students attracted by the country’s competitive rates for English education, which costs only a fraction of the tuition in schools in the United States or Canada.
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