Canada looking to double the number of international students

The federal government announced a plan that it hopes will attract more international students to Canadian post-secondary campuses.  The International Education Strategy aims to double the number of international students and researchers — to 450,000 — in Canada by 2022 in an effort to create jobs and stimulate the domestic economy. Canadian full-time undergraduate students pay an average of $5,700 in tuition every year. International students, meanwhile, can pay three times that amount — or an average of $19,500 every year.  The government estimates that recruiting more international students could generate some 86,000 new jobs in Canada and add an additional $10 billion to the domestic economy each year.

The strategy will “advance Canada’s commercial interests in priority markets around the world and ensure that we maximize the people-to-people ties that help Canadian workers, businesses and world-class educational institutions achieve real success in the largest, most dynamic and fastest-growing economies in the world,” said Minister of International Trade Ed Fast in a statement.  The priority markets identified in the plan include Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Vietnam, and the Middle East-North Africa — emerging economies where there is increasing demand for international education.  An investment of $5 million per year, already approved in the federal budget, will be used to brand and market Canada as a “world-class education destination” in those countries.  An additional $13 million over the next two years will go toward Mitacs, a Vancouver-based non-profit that offers students internship and research opportunities abroad.