Imagine….Canada

It has been a very hectic since I left for Canada almost a week ago. I was absolutely planning to write more often on this blog. But it just didn’t work out as expected. So time for an update on the Canadian adventure. I travelled to Canada on behalf of Study Destination Sweden, a project initiated by the Swedish Institute and a large number of Swedish higher education institutions. The purpose of this visit was to get a better idea how Canada markets itself as a study destination. What happens at national level (Edu-Canada) and how are the educational institutions involved in this?

We organised a large number of meetings with several stakeholders is dealing with promotion of Canada as a study destination. It was extremely challenging to find the right stakeholders in a country without a federal minister of education (every province and teritory has it’s own minister(s) of education). We started our first day in Ottawa with a breakfast meeting with a Higher Education Consultancy company. We spent our day mostly at the Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Edu-Canada is also part of this ministry (Edu-Canada is responsible for the slogan: ”Imagine….Education au/in Canada”). At federal level, education is seen as an important export product and therefore national marketing  of education is placed under responsibility of this ministry. Recent figures show that attracting international students to Canada leads to a revenue of 8 biljon CAD per year. So you can probably imagine that education is big business in Canada. In Canada, international education is not just seen as a temporary service that is offered. It is also seen as a very efficient way of attracting skilled workers for Canada’s knowledge economy.

Besides meetings with Edu-Canada, we also had a meeting with the department that is responsible for scholarships and policy, a representative of the Ministry of Immigration (concerning Canada’s migration policy towards international students).  On the same day we also met with several non-governmental organisations that are strongly related to the Canadian higher education sector: The Canadian Bureau for International Education, The Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada, and Canada’s Consortium for International Education Marketing. The first day finished on the train from Ottawa to Montréal, where we tried to summarize our findings of the day.

The weekend was mostly dedicated to setting up a structure for our report and writing down our findings from the first day of meetings. Although we had many meetings it was still a bit difficult to understand who does what when it comes to higher education in Canada. It was interesting to conclude that all stakeholders had their own interpretation of responsibilities.

On Monday the delegation was split up into two groups. One group visited McGill University in Montréal and I went to Bishop’s University in Lennoxville (together with a colleague from the Swedish Institute). Tuesday was completely dedicated to writing on the report. In the meanwhile we travelled to Toronto, the last destination of our study visit. Today we visited the Council of Ministers of Education of Cananda (CMEC). This council is formed by all ministers of education of the several provinces and teritories. During the afternoon we visited to Ryerson University.

Now it’s time to write on the report again. The presure is high since we will present the results next week Thursday in Stockholm. Tomorrow we’ve a meeting scheduled at York University in Toronto.