How Canada's recruitment of foreign students failed to match labour market needs

There’s a program for everyone at Seneca Business. Promotional videos like this aim to recruit students to college business programs, and they’re often pitched specifically at international students. Teamwork is a cornerstone of our education. We work together on projects, just like in the real business world. But for international students who take these courses, what’s it like finding a job in that real business world? Akash Singh came from India and got a business diploma from an Ontario public college. His two year program cost $34,000. I felt like bad like because I spent too much money on the course. After graduating in 2021, Singh searched for work and finance and accounting, but has only been able to land jobs at McDonald’s and as a security guard. I was expecting a job in the field of what I studied. Actually, Canadian colleges and universities have recruited nearly 800,000 international students to business programs over the past six years. Far more than any other field, new data obtained by CBC News shows how the number of permits issued to international students to study business grew dramatically at a far greater pace than such programs as IT, Health Sciences, or the trades. Students are graduating from programs that are not particularly valuable in the labor market. Group of Energy’s research focuses on the economic inclusion of immigrants. Essentially, we’re using the international student program as a source for cheap. Exploitable, expendable temporary labor. And that’s not what the international Student Program is designed to be. Colleges and universities have defended their intake of international students as a way of filling demand for skilled workers. Those employability skills that that the student learns can be applied to many sectors, and that’s more the case with business than anything else. But this expert believes there’s another reason why colleges recruited so many international students to business programs. It was a fountain of money and so we just sort of said it’s good. Alex Usher has analyzed Canada’s recruitment of international students over the years. I don’t think it had much to do with the labor market needs. I think it what it had to do with was colleges financial needs. Now that Ottawa has drastically reduced the number of international students to be allowed into the country, business programs could be first on the chopping block. There’s a responsibility of provinces in this and the institutions that they that they have jurisdiction over that they regulate to make sure that the programs that they are offering to international students are the ones that fit the job market. How to better match Canada’s intake of foreign students with the need for skilled labor is on the immigration minister’s mind. Mark Miller says he’ll raise the issue when he meets his provincial and territorial counterparts tomorrow. Mike Crowley, CBC News, Toronto.