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Canada must stop hiking foreign student fees: report
For Indian students, higher education in Britain is no longer an attractive option owning to tougher visa rules and withdrawal of a post-work visa option. According to consultants and students, the UK is being replaced by Canada and Australia as the preferred destinations for graduate study.
“Other countries such as Australia have gained after making some significant changes to visa regulations that seem to appeal to the Indian student,” Gulati said.
Study Overseas, a foreign education consultancy in New Delhi, confirmed the decline in the numbers of students heading for the UK in recent years. The number of students going to Britain through the agency has halved: for the September 2011 intake, it sent 40 students to UK universities as opposed to 80 in 2010.
According to a Student Insight report on India, about to be released by the British Council’s Education Intelligence unit, 74% of those considering undergraduate study and 77% of those "seriously considering" foreign study at the time that they were asked, are “beyond making casual enquiries and instead are looking to plan and implement overseas study arrangements”.
The majority had never studied abroad, but were “flexible when it came to choosing countries and institutions in which to study”. The British Council's data were collected between 2007 and July 2012 with some 1,200 responses collected in May-July 2012.
It is an indication of the potential size of the Indian market as a source of foreign students, according to the British Council.
With the British government saying it is tightening its rules because too many students use the study-abroad route as a bridge to migration, the British Council report showed that only 3% of Indian students surveyed said they wanted to move overseas permanently.
“The overwhelming majority of students from India plan to return home after studying, with only a very small percentage saying they were thinking of using higher education as a springboard for migration,” the report said, adding to a highly polarised debate in the UK on whether students should be regarded by the government as potential migrants in deciding policy on international students.
Meanwhile, a report prepared for Canada’s Trade Minister Ed Fast said Canada's schools must stop charging foreign students higher tuition fees than Canadians pay, in a bid to attract more of the foreigners who have boosted the economy.
The report noted that Australia and New Zealand have eliminated differential tuition fees for foreign graduate and post-doctoral students, respectively.
In Canada, foreign students pay from twice to six times more than local students to attend college or university.
"Given the competition in the global international education market, educational policy makers may need to re-examine the practice of differential tuitions and fees," the report concluded.
In October, Fast tasked a panel of university chiefs to come up with ways to attract more foreign students and researchers to the country, as part of Canada's overall economy strategy.
His spokesman said that the report will be incorporated into their proposals.
According to the document, foreign students contributed more than $8 billion to Canada's economy in 2010, up from $6.5 billion in 2008.
On educational services, countries such as 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.
"Canada's educational expertise is a valuable export that can be measured in comparison to other goods and service exports," said the report.
"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."
The report found there were 218,000 full-time international students in Canada in 2010 -- mostly from China and South Korea -- up from 178,000 in 2008 and more than double the number of students in 1999.
Ontario and British Columbia hosted nearly two thirds of international students in Canada (85,300 and 60,500 respectively) while Quebec, which saw major student protests this year over planned tuition hikes, was a distant third.
Another report from the MigrationWatch think-tank, published on 23 July, found that the rate of potential refusals by the UK Border Agency for student visas was high for India – around 59%, compared to a reported 0% for the US and Canada and an overall average for main source countries of around 33%.
MigrationWatch suggested that a ‘credibility test’, which would ascertain English-language proficiency and intention to return to the home country, would help reduce the number of “bogus” applications.
Not being able to work is a major deterrent
After changes to UK visa rules, students can no longer remain in the country to work. This, according to Indian students, is a major deterrent.
“The fee for UK universities for a one-year postgraduate course is around £11,000 (US$17,000). An equal amount is needed for stay and food,” said Shrin Raghavan, a final-year student at Delhi University.
“It makes no sense to go to a UK university as it would be financially impractical to repay the student loan if I am not able to work there for two years post-studies.”
In Canada, a post-study work permit can be issued up to a maximum of three years, depending on the length of the study programme that the student completes.
Students also said that the visa changes by the UK made them feel unwelcome.
According to Sikandar Singh, an independent career counsellor, the UK “cannot compete in a market where countries like Canada, Australia and others offered post-work visas.
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