2024 Events

The Crash of the International Student ‘Market’: Causes, Consequences, and the Future of Canadian Higher Education

Wednesday November 6, 2024

For decades, Canadian higher education turned to international student recruitment to make up for stagnant public funds. However, growing public concern that international students were competing for scarce housing and opportunities propelled a series of sweeping federal policy changes over the past year. Given the significant financial consequences for higher education institutions, many responses continue to reduce international students to a source of institutional income. This virtual panel seeks to offer a more critically engaged and complexity informed response to the recent policy changes by situating them within the colonial dynamics that have long structured Canada’s approach to international students. Panelists will also consider how policy shifts might shape the future of higher education as we face financial austerity, political polarization, and shifting migration patterns due to conflict and climate change.

Moderator:

Dr. Sharon Stein, Associate Professor, Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia Sharon Stein is an Associate Professor and Professor of Climate Complexity and Coloniality in Higher Education in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her work examines the challenges of confronting colonialism and climate change in different fields of study and practice, and the complexities of enacting reparative forms of social and institutional change. She is the founder of the Critical Internationalization Studies Network and a co-founder of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective.

Speakers:

Dr. Kumari Beck, Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University Kumari Beck is Associate Professor, Co-Director for the Centre for Research on International Education, and academic coordinator of the Equity Studies in Education program in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her research focuses on university internationalization including student, faculty, staff and administrator experiences. The courses she teaches reflect diverse and inter-related interests: intercultural and international education, contemporary issues in curriculum, multicultural and anti-racist education, the politics of difference, and teaching for social justice. Her work history includes teaching and program development in international education programs in Canada and abroad, adult community education in the Lower Mainland, and extensive experience in the international cooperation sector.

Dr. Dale McCartney, Assistant Professor, Arts and Integrated Studies, University of the Fraser Valley Dale McCartney is an Assistant Professor at the University of the Fraser Valley, where he teaches introduction to university courses to UFV’s non-traditional student population. Before joining UFV he worked for more than a decade as a sessional on the edges of the BC post-secondary system, including at a pathway college serving exclusively international students. His research examines the history of international student policy in Canada.

Dr. Lisa Brunner, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Migration Studies, University of British Columbia Lisa Brunner is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Centre for Migration Studies at the University of British Columbia. She is also a Public Policy Consultant with the Affiliation of Multicultural Societies and Service Agencies of BC (AMSSA). She conducts critical, interdisciplinary research on international migration and education, especially in Global North settler-colonial contexts. She has over a decade of professional experience as an international student advisor and has been a Regulated Canadian Immigration Consultant since 2014.