Abstract:

This paper examines the causes of the internationalization of Canadian education, and its impacts on the Canadian educational institutions, particularly universities, their constituents, and the larger communities around international students and their families.

The Canadian educational sector is faced with new challenges and opportunities for domestic and international reasons. A dwindling younger population in the rural areas and government budget cuts have forced all levels of Canadian educational institutions to set off on the recruitment for international students. On the other hand, there has been a surge of demand for the Canadian education services in the newly industrialized countries, particularly of the East Asia, which is fuelled by new wealth from a mounting trade surplus and foreign currency reserves. These countries have been traditionally an important source of 'economic' immigration, and now they are becoming the major source of 'education migration'. In our focussed study on the East Asian immigrants and migrants and their choices of Canada as the destination country, we take note of an increasing correlation between immigration, which is permanent, and education migration, which is supposed to be temporary by nature, in Canada.

Being faced with the decreasing public subsidy, Canadian universities get an additional sources of revenues from international students' tuition, which is much higher than the domestic students' tuition. We examine a series of public policy changes by the Canadian government, which have helped promote education migration from overseas. One of our hypothesis is that the fiscally conservative Canadian government may regard the revenues from international students' tuition as the altenative to its subsidy to the educational institutions.

We also examine the positive and negative impacts of internationalization and commercilization of Canadian education on the constituent members of public education institutions. For the better, the improved financial situations have moderated the escalation of domestic students' tuition. Internationalization seems to working in both direction, and a large number of domestic students are expanding their international experiences and taking overseas employment opportunities. However, the extra cash flows from international students' tuition revenues have led to a university's 'easy' view of international students as 'cash cows', and, in some cases, to moral hazards of financial management. The cultural adaptation of international students is reported to be illusive. Canadian domestic students have mixed feelings towards international students, who are current competitors for a high grade and potential competitors for domestic jobs. Academics and faculty members feel that an excessive commercialization of the Canadian higher education is poised to threaten academic freedom and the long-term coherency of public education.

Keywords:

Globalization, Interantionalization of Education, Commercilization of Education, Education Poicy, Canadian Education System, International Migration.