Canadian Immigration News

British Columbia to Attract International Students

Premier Christy Clark's British Columbia (B.C.) Liberal government announced a $5 million grant toward scholarships and research internships for international students over the next four years.

According to the Minister of Advanced Education Naomi Yamamoto, international education was one of the eight sectors in the B.C. Jobs Plan bringing significant investment into local economies. The Minister revealed that the province intended to increase the number of international students in B.C. by 50 percent or an additional 47,000 international students over four years. Almost half of the rise will come from enrolments in private-language schools, 30 percent from public post-secondary institutions, 12 percent from private post-secondary and 13 percent in K-12.

The province will give a one-time $700,000 grant to a program that helps attract and support international students to do research internships at B.C. universities. A $2.3 million grant is also offered to help graduate students from both B.C. and abroad undertake research internships in the province. These two programs will be sponsored by Mitacs, a B.C. based not-for-profit research organization working with both academia and industry. Besides financial support, the government also committed to consider new legislation or new regulations on quality assurance. Government strategy will focus on a marketing strategy aiming to increase international awareness of B.C. as an education destination. Currently, there are about 94,000 international students in the province.

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