HALIFAX — A provincial students’ group is encouraging the government and universities to focus on recruiting more international students to help combat the dwindling population of people in their 20s.
StudentsNS says it is imperative that Nova Scotia focus on increasing the number of international students coming to study here.
“Nova Scotia’s 18-29 year-old population will have shrunk 25% between 2011 and 2031, with serious impacts on every facet of our society, including university enrolment,” said StudentsNS Executive Director Jonathan Williams.
“If we can persuade international students to stay here after they graduate, we’re going to be expanding our population, creating a lot more opportunities, but also bringing in people with different perspectives, with different cultures that kind of expand the cultural wealth of our province.”
Williams says without a boost in global recruits, the post secondary education system will have to fundamentally change, most notably by shrinking.
A report released by the group offers numerous recommendations for enticing grads to Nova Scotia as well as reasons why it makes sense economically.
Mukul Gupta came to Halifax from Northern India to study computer science and business administration at Saint Mary’s University.
“We have good colleges and that back at home, but the population doesn’t really allow that one-to-one interaction with the professors and all that kind of stuff,” he says. “So that was one of the main reasons I came to Canada, just the quality of the education.”
But he says there are some obvious barriers, such as the cost of tuition, which can be up to double that of a domestic student. Gupta also says international students are not directly eligible for student loans and traditional modes of financial assistance.
Gupta, who plans to graduate this year, has started his own IT consulting business and says Halifax is a place many international students would like to stay if the conditions are right. Eliminating barriers to immigrating, upgrading skills and breaking into business networks would be a good start to bolstering retention rates he says.
“You meet people from all around the world every day and that helps you to learn a lot about these people their culture and in today’s economy where there is so much globalization going on, it’s good to know so many people from different cultures.”
The Connector Program, a project run by the Greater Halifax Partnership, aims to connect international grads with local employers.
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