Canadian Immigration News

Canada Should Decrease Foreign Student Fees, New Report Says

Canada should cut foreign student fees to attract more foreigners to study in the country, according to a new government report on July 27, 2012.

The report highlights that Australia and New Zealand have removed differential tuition fees for foreign graduate and post-doctoral students while Canada keeps the higher fees for foreign students. Overseas students in Canada are charged from twice to six times more than local students. The report concludes that Canadian educational policy makers should consider the practice of differential tuition fees in a highly competitive global international education market.

Trade Minister Ed Fast assigned a panel of university chiefs to suggest ways to attract more foreign students and researchers to the country in last October. Foreign students brought Canada more than $8 billion in 2010, up from $6.5 billion in 2008, the report reveals. In term of educational services, China, France, India, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and the United States spent 14 to 44 percent of the value of the goods they import from Canada. In 2011, there were 218,000 full-time international students in Canada, mostly from China and South Korea.

"Canada's educational expertise is a valuable export that can be measured in comparison to other goods and service exports," the report states. "International students can also become a valuable source of highly skilled labor to our economy at a time when the western world is facing potential labor shortages, especially among top talent."

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