Structural incentives to attract foreign students to Canada's post-secondary educational system : Skills Research Initiative

Canada ranks fourteenth in the OECD in terms of the percentage of foreign students in its post- secondary student body, and far behind Australia and the United Kingdom in terms of its 1 A recent New York Times editorial raised alarm about the competition for students: The fact is that the competition for students has become far more intense. [...] The graph also shows the implied outflows given the inflows and the change in the stock. [...] An important part of the background to the issue of revenue generation for Canadian post-secondary institutions is the concern that the rising cost of publicly funded health care will increasingly starve the education sector of funds. [...] The difference between the two prices is the revenue gain that is available if a place is shifted from the domestic to the foreign student “bucket.”. [...] This brief discussion makes clear the impact on domestic students of revenue- driven foreign recruitment depends on the incentives and opportunities that institutions have to alter the number of student slots, the student mix, and the quality of education provided.