“Ultimately, students are being crushed for no reason,” University of Regina Student Union president Haris Kahn stated.
Rising tensions between Canada and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have upturned the lives of the over 170 Saudi post-secondary students studying across Saskatchewan.
“I know some of the Saudi students are in the very last semester, of the last year, of getting their degrees. Now when you ask them to leave an institution – a country – and switch to a different country and institution, you don’t know how long it’s going to take for a person to graduate,” Khan continued.
Issues between the two countries reached a boiling point last week when Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland tweeted support for two Saudi Arabian prisoners.
Saudi Arabia responded with a litany of counter-measures including recalling their ambassador from Ottawa, and the thousands of Saudi students studying in Canada.
“We can recuperate the tuition. I think the biggest loss that the university is going to face is the cultural loss. We have to understand that Saskatchewan is a bit remote, and it is very difficult to attract students from all over the world,” Livia Castellanos, the University of Regina’s chief international officer, said.
The move is unprecedented; and it poses a problem the university can’t solve for its students.
“I don’t think this is about the students having money or not, I think this is much more a political movement from the Saudi Government. I think that perhaps the students even if they had funding to pay for their studies, they wouldn’t be here,” Castellanos noted.
“Six per cent of the [Saudi} students that we have at the University of Regina are paying their tuition – they are not being sponsored by the Saudi government – and they are telling us that they also have been asked to leave,” she continued.
Students enrolled in the spring/summer semesters will be able to finish their courses, but by Aug. 30 all Saudi Arabian students will need to be out of the University.
The Saudi government has given a list of 17 countries where the students can transfer their studies including the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, Australia, South Korea, and New Zealand.
“We are preparing, right now, an action plan for them to transfer to some of the countries where the University of Regina has agreements, we are going to be contacting the university partners that we have in these places in the world, and we are going to be preparing packages for the students,” Castellanos said.
“The least we can do is to have a smoother transition period – and set those students up for success – by making sure all the documents are processed in a timely manner, and make sure everything that the students need is transferred,” Khan added.
Castellanos expects the transition will likely come at the expense of some of the students earned credits at the University of Regina, but notes that’s not the biggest hurdle they face.
“I think this is going to be a bumpy ride for the students. It’s difficult to transition from one school to another within Canada, it’s much more difficult to do it from one country to another,” Costellanos continued.
“The biggest problem will be their emotion transition; really ripping them away from their homes here in Saskatchewan.”
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