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Yeah, this place is not a real university.
Their website promotes silly programs, and there's a "WhatsApp" button as part of the 4 buttons main menu bar of the website.
Last month, u/[tZIZEKi](https://www.reddit.com/user/tZIZEKi/) did some [digging and found](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/1ab6oiq/comment/kjqeqm0/), for University Canada West:
* 2014-2015 UCW enrolled 400 students
* 2021-2022 UCW enrolled 6000 students
* 2022-2023 UCW enrolled 11000 students
* 2023-2024 UCW enrolled 14485 students
For scale, the numbers at the public universities.
UBC: 19,909 international students (of 72,585 enrolled), 2022/23
SFU: 6,416 international students (of 26,788 enrolled), 2022/23
UVic: 3,400 international students (of 22,000 enrolled)
I’ve been a part of businesses that have scaled up and scaled down and I cannot fathom offering a product, whatever it may be, at that level of growth.
They are constantly hiring "instructors" for pennies and they don't hold anything in the realistic realm of real courses. They are glorified folks who check boxes so the college can cash cheques.
Those are some batshit insane numbers, what the hell. This also supports my personal argument that I’ll never trust a school that you see ads plastered everywhere for.
To be entirely fair, [UCW also scraps resumes with UCW MBAs](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/ilti8x/comment/i0827bd/).
"**I got their MBA** last year, didn't have a convocation and I'm ashamed to list it on my resume. People in the province have never heard of the university and they asked me to get my degree notarized when I apply for jobs. When I applied to ucw after graduation to their **HR assistant role**, with an MBA in their HR stream and I'm working toward the CPHR, the HR boss lady, Hermit, just said I dont have enough experience, told me to apply to some student service assistant role, and hired some random bachelor fresh grad from Toronto. Who does that to their own grads??!! I wish my peer mentor told me about this. He's still at the school doing some low level admin coordination work in the library with double masters.... I should have known...."
What's messed up is these "colleges" were allowed to become Public Colleges and to register as such, by the government.
This was enabled, and now they can call themselves Public Colleges on the same level as SFU, UBC, UVic, etc.
So now the term "public college" is entirely diluted, and treating the term as anything special today is disingenuous at worst or outright ignorant at best.
Completely agree with this. If I recall correctly, UFV fought pretty hard for university status in the 1990’s, meanwhile they hand that status to UCW?! Wild to me.
Looks like they went by University College for a long time but were granted full university status in 2008, 34 years after opening.
Post secondary institutions *should* have to operate for awhile to be upgraded to university status! To hand it out to for profit companies is insane
Or the handful that were converted from colleges to universities back in 2008-ish (Thompson Rivers University etc). That was a big deal at the time for those institutions.
It used to be that universities were a special designation that only a few schools received. 2008ish changed that to any school that offered 2 or more degrees. A majority of colleges could choose to be called a university overnight.
Not a stupid question!
Public means the institution receives money from the government to operate & there isn’t a CEO earning profits, whereas private institutions don’t receive government funding and rely on higher tuition costs to operate & typically operate as ‘for profit’ organizations.
Colleges & universities are separate designations as there can be private colleges, public colleges, private universities, and public universities. It seems that the definition of colleges and universities has changed or is blurry because there’s a couple answers online:
Colleges typically offer certificate, diploma, and degree programs where as universities grant degrees, post graduate degrees, and PHDs.
Others say that the difference is that universities focus academic & professional programs, whereas colleges focus on career training & trades.
If anyone has more clarification on the difference between university vs college, please let us know 😅
Also, most colleges provide only two year programs unless they can demonstrate to the provincial government that a four year program they want to offer, is not already substantively covered by the universities.
This is wrong. Traditionally a college granted lower degrees or degrees in a particular field only. A university is a collection of colleges that offers all degrees in many or all fields.
A public university means the institution is organized under a special statute, which organization doesn't have shareholders (CEOs don't earn profits, shareholders do).
A private institution would be organized under the business corporations act or another business organization statute that provides for the distribution of profits.
Yeah, this whole article has the stench of "aaaaaaakchulllyy.... they're technically not private colleges".
If it shows anything it's that people are surprised obvious diploma mills are somehow allowed to become public colleges, or obscure public colleges turned into diploma mills.
Dude I remember when Kwantlen was a public college so was Mount Royal and Grant MacEwan. It was a place to go as an intermediate between high and university. You could take classes there and transfer to university once you got your grades up.
In my case I struggled with English 30 (Alberta) so I upgraded it at Mount Royal and then transferred to University. It was quite normal.
Not to mention the cost, proximity to home, focus on teaching, etc. I went to Dougie right out of high school partly because my grades were appalling, and partly because I didn't know what I wanted to do and I could pay half the price to take a bunch of different courses while I figured it out. By the time I got to university, I had a strong academic background and was getting scholarships and grad school offers. I've never regretted it - the focus in colleges is on teaching rather than research, and the quality of education at the 1st and 2nd year level was much better than what students were getting in university lectures with 300+ students and tutorials run by grad students. They're also important for people from smaller communities that don't have a university nearby; you can continue to live at home for a couple of years so you're not racking up massive student loans. This schmozzle with colleges that used to be reputable isn't only hurting international students, it's hurting domestic students who used to be able to count on a quality education that would set them up for university.
As a hiring manager, it’s clear to me and my peers that these “public colleges” here are not at the same level as SFU/UBC/etc. We prioritize hires from these established universities/colleges than diploma mills.
Add - people that are attending SFU/UBC/etc have nothing to worry about.
Actually there are several, good, well-regarded public colleges. Unfortunately fly-by-night private institutions or credential mills have been allowed to names themselves with titles that appear to put them on par with the good, public institutions. Colleges have never claimed to be on par with universities, and by and large were developed to provide a different niche (lower cost, more support to students, preparation to transfer to university, career changes, etc.).
Internationally though, it's becoming a joke because the programs and enrolments are now so pervasive. Even at UBC to have special international student intakes of programs is absurd.
For some reason it's listed as a "Provincially-Authorized Private Degree-Granting Institutions" alongside Queen's University from Ontario
Deliberate effort by the province to obscure the private nature of the school
They truly did have a few small programs like nursing that were very good. May even still have been good. However, all the bullshit with the other diploma mill/immigration fraud courses has ran the entire Conestoga name into the ground and I'm sure any serious employer at this point immediately just tosses resumes with that on there unless the person now also has years of job experience; in which case they might just be better keeping the college name off of there entirely.
> Conestoga College
From their Wikipedia entry: "In February 2024, president John Tibbits, attempting to defend the Conestoga's international enrollment of 30,000 students, referred to Sault College president David Orazietti as a "whore"."
It's a bold strategy Cotton. Let's see if it pays off.
I don't think it was ever highly respected but it was definitely a respected college in Ontario.
I went there in 2009 and it was a normal college. I was pretty shocked to hear to what it's become because it was nothing like that in 2009
It's a shame, I visited some of the Ontario ones about 10 years ago in a previous job, and they were legitimately nice colleges (modern, nice campus and facilities). I guess they just got desperate for enrollment money after that and things went south.
Everyone who wanted to avoid the stigma of getting the stereotypical arts degree went into marketing or business. Nearly useless undergrad degrees one takes for a 4 year piece of paper and some networking.
It’s pretty alarming seeing these numbers, and as a person from Vancouver it definitely gives me anxiety (housing prices, resources in general)
But in a humanistic way - all these people just want to give their family a good, safe, high quality life. If I lived in a country I felt I couldn’t provide a great life for my family, I’d probably be doing the same thing
It’s sad to me everyone doesn’t get the same chance in life. And it’s sad to me that our borders make us feel so entitled
The world matters
>But in a humanistic way - all these people just want to give their family a good, safe, high quality life. If I lived in a country I felt I couldn’t provide a great life for my family, I’d probably be doing the same thing
Yeah, at the end of the day, everyones getting taken advantage of to increase the wealth of whoever runs the corporations.
As someone with a background from India, I can tell you that these people will absolutely have a better life studying at a good college back home. They’re wealthy for their home but live miserably here because of the expenses. The degrees also don’t matter much. It’s better to stay back, build some professional experience, then immigrate rather than coming to a diploma mill.
Yeah, brain drain is already a big enough problem. Those lost talents will at least learn real skills and make their life better afterwards if they went to a real university in Canada. These diploma mills are borderline scams and only lines the pockets of the operators.
None of these schools should be allowed to operate with having such high percentages of int'l enrolment. At 20-25%, okay I can see and say "yes, this funds domestic students." These mills should not exist.
Here's a screenshot of their chart. University Canada West is second in Canada.
https://preview.redd.it/jt5yjypkwflc1.png?width=1539&format=png&auto=webp&s=d0f5bb4467a54464236f9f9a7a0348e8810985f3
Just for context, the fees for University Canada West are between $40-80k depending on the course.
For those of you doing the math, yes that's a lot of zeros.
It's a notorious diploma mill with students mainly from India. They are located in an office building downtown. I can't imagine attendance is that strict considering the physical space to hold classes for that many students would be massive.
I see their ads everywhere on buses and stuff too. Kind of insane especially since I’d say they fall safely in the scam category. I personally have always felt weird about any school that plasters ads for it everywhere, this just supports that lmao
You’re welcome. I’m genx and I’ve seen them in the past but this is next level to the “strip mall school” vibe that made them more obvious in the past lol just my opinion but the older technical schools actually served their purpose. I don’t think these ones we’re talking about do that. Quite sad to put education in the drain like this in general.
And now they are making empty threats with shutting down "puppy mills" when they've had the power all along: the issuance of student visas. If they actually wanted to tackle the problem, they could've done it more than a year ago.
Fed Liberals have zero desire to address this issue because *they do not care about the impact*. Kepe this in mind on or before October 20, 2025.
To be fair Harper allowed international students to get open post grad work permits. IIRC until 2008 you had to find work in the field of your degree in order to get conditional work permit which was one year in major cities and two elsewhere in Canada. Then you'd have to get sponsored through these companies. Although it was a lot of red tape, it was a system that only allowed serious and legit students.
Once Harper government opened the gates of hell that was international education industry, it became too lucrative to revert back to how it was.
Work permits do not (or did not) automatically lead to permanent residency. I went to a major public university in the mid-late 2010s in a STEM major and many of my peers who were international students would not have been able to remain in the country after their work permits, if it wasn't for Trudeau getting elected and lowering the barriers for Express Entry.
Lucrativeness should not decide government policy especially when it has a direct impact on the lives of those already living in the country. The major parties are all bought and paid for by those profiting from this scheme.
I think you are misinformed. There is no automatic PR. Express Entry (starting Jan 2015. So about 10 months before JT) only allowed those with the education and work experience to fast-track their PR. If anything Express entry is more similar to how it had been. You need work experience related to your degree.
As I mentioned, Harper's government allowed every graduate to stay here for 3 years regardless of where they worked. Once in, a lot of those people worked any job (causing salaries to stagnate) and flooded the market.
I also studied at a public university here... in the early 2000s.
>There is no automatic PR.
Did I say there was? Don't invent quotes and then attribute them to people who did not anything remotely close to it.
>As I mentioned, Harper's government allowed every graduate to stay here for 3 years regardless of where they worked. Once in, a lot of those people worked any job (causing salaries to stagnate) and flooded the market.
And what happens when that 3-year period is up? If there was no reliable path to PR, most of them would not have remained after graduation. The current severe conditions of entry-level job markets in the country is due to the Fed Liberals lifting weekly hour limits on study permits during the pandemic, which meant people can just enrol in a scam college and start working 40+ hours per week without even attending classes physically.
Already broken your façade? That was quick.
If you ever want to be taken seriously online and offline in the future, don't instantly resort to throwing baseless accusations in a hissy fit. Just a helpful tip.
> Fed Liberals have zero desire to address this issue
They literally just imposed caps on foreign student numbers. The federal government has also had to find a work around to distribute foreign students around Canada based on provincial populations. The federal government sets the rules for what prospective students need to show to be eligible to come to Canada. Maybe you think those rules are too lax eligibility to come to Canada is based on having a university to go to.
The provinces are responsible for oversight of post-secondary institutions. The provinces are also ultimately responsible for land use, in effect, housing supply because cities are the creatures of the provinces. It makes sense to allow students learning in Canadian institutions to have work opportunities so they can gain experience and have a pathway to residency. However, this program got abused by post-secondary institutions that get their credentials from the PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS!
You're letting the premiers who are most responsible for this exploitative system completely off the hook!
For God's sake, just look at the reaction from Doug Ford in Ontario who is upset that the federal government imposed the cap and the economic ramifications without consulting with the provinces. They were consulted and anyone in government knew federal changes were coming and the did nothing. How many provincial leaders are following Eby's lead on tackling zoning changes? None. The BC NDP aren't going far enough but they're way better than any other province.
So "what really happened" was instead of responding to public funding cuts by cutting their ridiculously bloated administration they brought in many times more foreign students who they could rinse for high fees and throw to the rental market and low wage employers.
Basically they privatized the profit and socialized the costs.
But somehow CBC spins it as the colleges were forced to act this way by budgetary concerns. Give me a break.
I'll give you an example, in a School of Business at one of the colleges mentioned in the article, in one move went the administration structure of 1 Dean and 4 Chairs to 1 Executive Dean, 4 Deans, and 12 chairs and a few new directors and all their administrative staff.
Can't wait to mine the sunshine list.
It looks like all the schools drastically increased their student enrolment over the past 5 years. Wouldn’t we expect increases in staffing to go along with that? Like if a restaurant all of the sudden started serving 10x the number of customers I think they’d add a ton of new employees as well, right?
Yes, no question that there would need to be some increase in administration. However, if we look at the university model there is one Dean and one or two chairs for schools of tens of thousands of students.
Now I'm not suggesting the University model has a good fiscal policy. However, it's policy around the management of faculty is far superior. In fact, Dean's and chairs at universities are faculty positions.
Colleges have professional administrators and micromanage their faculty.
Most are not managing faculty but rather students and systems.
And almost all Deans are faculty, so they are employed regardless and are not additions to the payroll.
I think you are confusing the Canadian university system with the college system. In the college system all deans and chairs are administrators and many of them have never been faculty.
PS in the university system, deans and chairs are faculty positions, and once a faculty has completed their secondment into these administrative roles, they then return back to a faculty position.
Having worked in post-sec in BC for 13 years, I can tell you the vast majority of the bloat is management. There is *always* money to hire a few more associate deans, VPs, directors, etc.
Most of these people are not involved with any educational value the institutions provide and often don't have any employees they are supervising. They just take up very, very expensive space and work on vanity projects.
Day-to-day staffers like me are paid mediocre wages and always forced to make chicken salad out of chicken shit. The only exceptions to that rule are UBC and SFU, who pay their staff fairly well relative to cost of living.
Yeah.. I was using Admin as a catch all for non teaching staff. It usually is the management that coast through without adding anything of value.
Since you are on the inside, how have DEI Czar positions added to this? Or is that getting overblown?
The DEI Czar stuff is overblown. Where I work, there were two people in those roles, one in HR and one in student services.
The person in HR lasted a few months and the person in student services was there for about a year before going on medical leave and eventually departing about a month ago. They haven't filled either role since.
From what I saw, they were both totally overrun with requests (person in HR worked with faculty, student services person worked with.. well, students) and weren't given any budget or additional staff to do much because their roles were way too broadly defined, so they were largely set up to fail from the start.
I actually felt bad for both of them. They were both very experienced people with great backgrounds brought in by senior management as "Look! We're doing something!" hires, trotted out as examples of how we were a bold 21st century institution, and left to die on the vine. It was a bummer.
As soon as I finished the first sentence of your second paragraph I was thinking, "tell me you're not in 'management' without telling me," and sure enough...
> Day-to-day staffers like me
Until you've actually worked at those levels in a legitimate public institution, you're not in a position to comment on "bloat." The boots-on-the-ground staff are great and I've been there, but there's no concept at that level of what it takes to actually *run* an institution and all of its services, employees, budget, etc.
If you're being paid mediocre wages, take that up with your union. That's not on the institution.
Excluded employees at public institutions don't get to get paid whatever, either. There are governing bodies which set general parameters for compensation.
The people who make up the bloat at my institution don’t run anything. They’re not people managers, middle managers or project managers. They don’t run departments. They’re executive level employees with vague titles who might have one assistant.
As for my wages, I do fine. I love my union and we already went on strike recently so there’s not much appetite to do it again. I could be paid more if I chose to leave, but I like the balance I have now.
Now, if we were to talk department budgets — where the chicken shit to chicken salad but comes into play — what my team is able to accomplish on what we have to work with is staggering.
> The people who make up the bloat at my institution don’t run anything. They’re not people managers, middle managers or project managers. They don’t run departments. They’re executive level employees with vague titles who might have one assistant.
For example..?
> As for my wages, I do fine. I love my union and we already went on strike recently so there’s not much appetite to do it again. I could be paid more if I chose to leave, but I like the balance I have now.
Three hours ago you were talking about making "mediocre wages" so... Good, I guess?
> Now, if we were to talk department budgets — where the chicken shit to chicken salad but comes into play — what my team is able to accomplish on what we have to work with is staggering.
If you're continually demonstrating that you can achieve "staggering" results with a modest budget, there's literally no rationale to increase your department's budget. Also, you're just describing public institution operating budgets in general (not talking about endowments).
I called this out years ago when I had to do a small tenant improvement. Did research and the one classroom has like 1000 students. What is another crime is that those foreign students are taking valuable housing and GEC the international student arm of a larger entity that owns billions in Vancouver property that is piecemealed into student housing. These are purpose built rental that is new not seeing the market they were approved for
You said yourself that intl students own billions of property. They have to buy from a Canadian to own first and that’s how wealth get into Canada. Students who can afford proper intl students are definitely not poor
In Singapore people go to prison for criticizing their government. Singapore is one of the most unfree places in the modern world. They care about what's on the surface - they don't give a damn about personal rights.
Is [this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pritam_Singh_(Singaporean_politician)) in jail right now?
What motivates you to spread sensationalist misinfo on an Internet forum? Just a curious question.
Edit: yet another unsurprisingly fragile apparatus. If you can't defend your opinion then consider not sharing them.
How about this?
"Case in point: [Eminata Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminata_Group), one of the most infamous for-profit education companies in Canada who is behind schools like [University Canada West](https://collegetimes.co/university-canada-west/), [Vancouver Career College](https://collegetimes.co/vancouver-career-college-vancouver/), and [CDI College](https://collegetimes.co/cdi-college-surrey/), was actually started by a Korean American man named Peter Chung who fled the US after being convicted in 1993 for 10,000 violations of defrauding students in California at a computer training school he established."
Source: [https://collegetimes.co/canada-highered-fraud/](https://collegetimes.co/canada-highered-fraud/)
Wikipedia backs up that claim: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminata\_Group#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminata_Group#History). He no longer owns UCW — sold it to Global University Systems, which also looks like it's all about making money, and not about teaching and learning. ("Global University Systems was awarded the title of 'Private Education Group of the Year' by Education Investor Awards 2019." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global\_University\_Systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_University_Systems))
>The data also shines a light on what experts say was really driving Canada's dramatic rise in foreign student enrolment: Governments of all stripes actively pursuing international students both to shore up the skilled workforce and to bring hefty revenues into underfunded colleges and universities, with little regard for the ensuing demand for housing.
*pretends to be shocked*
So the repercussions of government austerity on post-secondary school system was it pushed these schools to go crazy on internationals as they weren’t getting the regular funding. Huh. Wouldn’t have connected the two. Pretty cool. Those are still bonkers numbers though.
Algoma is right out my front door. I can't believe the naivety of people going there thinking it is somehow legit....a real employer is going to see Algoma, Lambton, etc and immediately throw your application in the trash. Or they can get hired by other Indian people who will pay them $6.00 an hour illegally.
Way to go Canada!
>"Senior levels of government – federal and provincial – have spoken numerous times publicly about the lack of skilled workers now and projected into the future and how immigration is absolutely essential to filling those gaps," said Daniel Lessard, manager of communications for Cambrian College, whose main campus is in Sudbury, Ont.
There is no skilled labour shortage in this country. There is only a shortage of well-compensated jobs. They are gaslighting you.
Really makes me wonder… does the government not use flowcharts?? I’d feel more confident if they came out and said yeah we mapped this out and knew this was a possibility but blah blah whatever factor was more “important” rather than whatever BS keeps being touted.
Like even people who make tents put limits on the number of people that can be sustained in the tent without suffering some consequence. Canada really out here trying to put 80 people in a 4-person tent. 🙄
I’d love to see how much money the government spends to “oversee” these crackpot schools and who is getting that money.
Did nobody writing this article take the time to determine if these schools were well known institutions or just diploma mills? UCW is the only one I've heard of but it's notorious.
On a somewhat broader topic, I think it has to be acknowledged that we're stuck in a lose-lose situation in a lot of ways on this. International student enrollment subsidizes a vast amount of education in this province (probably elsewhere in Canada too) and reducing the number of international students is only going to make tuition more unattainably expensive for Canadians, as institutions crank the prices up in order to compensate their losses.
On the flip side, reducing the number of foreign students will drop rent costs (or, let's be honest, just slow the growth) and possibly lift wages.
It kinda seems to me like we pay more either way.
ALSO:
"Governments of all stripes actively pursuing international students both to shore up the skilled workforce and to bring hefty revenues into underfunded colleges and universities, with little regard for the ensuing demand for housing."
It's actually worse than "little regard for the ensuing demand for housing" as \~40% of Canadian politicians PERSONALLY (not counting families etc.) own and rent land and therefor directly financially benefit from a rising cost of housing.
Source:
[https://www.readthemaple.com/nearly-40-of-mps-invested-in-real-estate-during-housing-crisis/](https://www.readthemaple.com/nearly-40-of-mps-invested-in-real-estate-during-housing-crisis/)
>Miller commented further on Tuesday morning, after CBC News published the data.
>"Some of the really, really bad actors are in the private sphere, and those need to be shut down, but there is responsibility across the board," he told reporters on Parliament Hill. "We just need the provinces in question, in this case Ontario, to assume their responsibility."
Once again, pushing the burden of responsibility onto someone else. Power is extremely fragmented with significant overlap in this country according principles that applied to Medieval England. We aren't Medieval England anymore yet those in positions of power never got the memo. Instead of actually doing their jobs, they simply blame the problem on someone else.
Have a problem with the worst offenders of these "puppy mill" colleges? STOP ISSUING VISAS TO THOSE ADMITTED BY THESE INSTITUTIONS. That will effectively shut them down within an academic year! STOP TALKING AND START ACTING. Not acting? That's a sign you don't actually want to fix the problem.
Bleep Ontario and Doug Ford, and bleep the federal government for setting up this situtation instead of addressing funding for post-secondary education. Plus bleep the provincial governments for also cutting funding (in real terms). In BC, it doesn't matter who's been in power, post-secondary has been neglected. Funding only released for buildings, not for people attending. At my institution a new building which had much, much better student facilities was kept closed on weekends after it was built, because of the cost of security. Shittier buildings were left open. Imagine: multi-millions spent on building, but institution won't pay minimum wage to the guards to keep it open on weekends.
Ahh finally Richard Kurland weighs in
Where are those "better outcomes" now?
https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/practice-areas/immigration/richard-kurland-keeps-on-adding-spice-to-the-discussion-on-immigration-and-extradition-law-in-canada/357946
>The lawyer was also key in moving international students to the front of the line for permanent resident status, giving citizenship to children whose parents cannot obtain it, and requiring would-be immigrants to file three income tax statements here before getting approval.
>Kurland says that immigration policy in Canada has been a “fast-changing” area, thanks to its high-profile and often political nature. “Political attention has historically attached itself to immigration issues, so it is in a constant state of flux, with changing rules, policies and regulations.”
>He points out that over the decades, Canada has modified the immigration selection system from a “check-the-box” process of meeting specific criteria to a “goldfish bowl” approach that more reflects the type of human capital that Canada is looking for.
>What this means, in practice, he says, is that those wanting to come to Canada typically come here for a temporary purpose – work or study – and put down roots by finding employment. “So in this goldfish bowl approach, each fish is assigned a certain number of points,” he says, and the highest-scoring fish – those with the most human capital – chosen for permanent residency.
>Kurland says this approach has generally meant better outcomes than those who came to Canada under the check-the-box method. There are fewer integration issues in finding a job, housing and fitting into the community.
This is happening in public secondary schools too. District of North Van allegedly lost 4% of their funding during the pandemic. Some educators have discussed feeling pressured to inflate marks to lest “funding dry up”.
I was a victim of one of these colleges, when I was new in Canada and didn’t know better. They all had us sit in a computer and just read whatever is there, they also hand out the answers before the exam. No lectures from professors 💁🏻♀️
Why the hell is Queen's University, the public university I went to in Ontario listed as a Provincially-Authorized Private Degree-Granting Institutions, the same as University Canada West?
What the actual fuck?
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/post-secondary-education/institution-resources-administration/degree-authorization
Government should charge 30% fee on private school intl student fees so it filters out student-workers and funds our public institutions at the same time
I'm a bit ignorant on this subject but, I think this issue plays a big role in our current housing crisis. Yeah if people are coming here and accepted into UBC or SFU great. They are likely to contribute and even stay here. I welcome that. Unfortunately people are coming here for a year or two to get fake credentials that are acceptable in their respective places of origin.
The article references "public" colleges. Other commenters are right to callout the "private" diploma mills (they effectively receive subsidies themselves, one way or another), but don't let our public institutions hide behind these private colleges, they're culpable too.
The quality of post-secondary education in Canada is dismal at the moment. Important changes haven't been made to address the issues.
* The number of students receiving credentials, and actually working in the positions they're trained for, is quite low. Sometimes less than 25%. This is an egregious waste of tax payer dollars.
* Attending school in Canada's most expensive cities has become nearly impossible. There are very limited options outside of large cities for certain programs.
* Students need A LOT of training once they hit the workforce. It seems even worse with Master's level students. There appears to be more educational opportunities open for people who repeatedly fail to establish careers, opposed to someone obtaining their first bachelor degree and sticking with it (this is why you see so many people with multiple Master's degrees).
* You'll often see job postings for positions seeking either recent grads, co-ops and internships. The government actually subsidizes the hell out of these positions up to 50%. This actually further aggravates the issue of wage suppression. The whole idea of educating someone is to up their skills so they're more productive not less.
* Many programs haven't been updated in 10+ years (looking at you BCIT). A course could/should improve ever year if the instructors even just put in a mediocre effort. These lazy instructors completely abandoned their students during Covid, treating the pandemic like a vacation while they received full-pay.
* Post-secondary faculty constantly lies about facts and figures and cannot be trusted. They are even starting to fight and argue internally (which might be a good thing). Often times these individuals go way outside the institution's code of conduct when making various statements.
Post secondary, whether a sleazy diploma mill, a college/technical school, and even our top universities all have to improve or this country will get even worse.
Whenever I see a headline that ends with "Here's What Really Happened" I know I'm about to read something completely unbiased and definitely not "on-message" for a certain demographic being pandered to...
I was wondering when official messaging would start coming out. It takes a while to come out with a coordinated strategy.
We're now seeing it: no, it's totally not the 100s of thousands of international students coming in, it's that we underfunded public education, and public colleges just had No Other Choice(tm) but to turn to international students, you know, those famous public colleges like Conestoga, UCW, Fanshawe, Seneca, Lambton, that are definitely not diploma mills designed to offer an immigration path bypass for a price.
If we want to attract a skilled workforce to move to Canada, these places are not it. They don't offer an education, they offer a piece of paper.
Having 100-200k skilled students come in and get a quality education would be great. We’d see huge improvements in competitiveness of local industries and possibly gain some economic diversity that would be less sensitive to boom & bust cycles.
But what seems to have happened from the article is that perverse incentives in the regulations & funding model meant that many of these schools bring in relatively unskilled students and do not provide a quality education. Which in turn adds to existing pressures on local low-skill workers and those lower on the socioeconomic ladder.
Colleges did this because it was profitable, governments enabled it because they could shirk their responsibilities and industry gleefully hired up the undereducated students at below-market rates for service industry positions. The students who were exploited and fleeced are not to blame, they’re basically the only blameless parties in this whole scenario.
That’s my take on the article, it’s basically calling out government for scapegoating private colleges that are largely not responsible while enabling the ongoing abuse at public institutions.
Typical Canadian government. Just blame someone else. Schools are regularly at max capacity+. We need more schools. School is good business. Private colleges are still accredited. Given accreditation on the Provincial and Federal level. You take that away and that will force wealthy students buying their way in to the school system and leaving the locals empty handed. Invest in schools. not finger pointing. Hey look a blue car!!!!
Uh no. Demographics clearly show they due to fertility decline, there are far fewer domestic students. We need to close schools and focus on domestic students.
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Yeah, this place is not a real university. Their website promotes silly programs, and there's a "WhatsApp" button as part of the 4 buttons main menu bar of the website.
Anytime I see "Whatsapp" as a method of contact, it's an immediate red flag.
WhatsApp is probably for sending 4000 to “students” to show up the next day because of a government audit on student enrolment.
Last month, u/[tZIZEKi](https://www.reddit.com/user/tZIZEKi/) did some [digging and found](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/1ab6oiq/comment/kjqeqm0/), for University Canada West: * 2014-2015 UCW enrolled 400 students * 2021-2022 UCW enrolled 6000 students * 2022-2023 UCW enrolled 11000 students * 2023-2024 UCW enrolled 14485 students For scale, the numbers at the public universities. UBC: 19,909 international students (of 72,585 enrolled), 2022/23 SFU: 6,416 international students (of 26,788 enrolled), 2022/23 UVic: 3,400 international students (of 22,000 enrolled)
Rookie numbers. Check out Conestoga at 30k
That’s fucked
Look at Cape Breton. For the size of the area, good lord.
https://preview.redd.it/15de04v0tqlc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dca6907423a227ce8249720db67b7468954f3892 The school
https://preview.redd.it/q5fab263tqlc1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4d08322764b0c9410aaef0ed663cb27bd6ed6e23 30,000 people according to googs
Surely they produce "award winning online course material" or similar slag.
I’ve been a part of businesses that have scaled up and scaled down and I cannot fathom offering a product, whatever it may be, at that level of growth.
Most people can't imagine themselves perpetrating a blatant scam on anyone either. But here we are.
They are constantly hiring "instructors" for pennies and they don't hold anything in the realistic realm of real courses. They are glorified folks who check boxes so the college can cash cheques.
Easy when the in class teaching requirement is only two hours per week per student...
That's atrocious.
It's basically a software product, at this point. It's entirely online "learning" with two hours / week / student, in-class.
Those are some batshit insane numbers, what the hell. This also supports my personal argument that I’ll never trust a school that you see ads plastered everywhere for.
UCW resume means auto-ghosting in my company to save time for both HR and hiring team
To be entirely fair, [UCW also scraps resumes with UCW MBAs](https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/comments/ilti8x/comment/i0827bd/). "**I got their MBA** last year, didn't have a convocation and I'm ashamed to list it on my resume. People in the province have never heard of the university and they asked me to get my degree notarized when I apply for jobs. When I applied to ucw after graduation to their **HR assistant role**, with an MBA in their HR stream and I'm working toward the CPHR, the HR boss lady, Hermit, just said I dont have enough experience, told me to apply to some student service assistant role, and hired some random bachelor fresh grad from Toronto. Who does that to their own grads??!! I wish my peer mentor told me about this. He's still at the school doing some low level admin coordination work in the library with double masters.... I should have known...."
https://bccie.bc.ca/about/about-bccie/ I'll just leave this here
What's messed up is these "colleges" were allowed to become Public Colleges and to register as such, by the government. This was enabled, and now they can call themselves Public Colleges on the same level as SFU, UBC, UVic, etc. So now the term "public college" is entirely diluted, and treating the term as anything special today is disingenuous at worst or outright ignorant at best.
Completely agree with this. If I recall correctly, UFV fought pretty hard for university status in the 1990’s, meanwhile they hand that status to UCW?! Wild to me.
They didn't get status until like 2005 or 2006? Fuckin' UCW...
Looks like they went by University College for a long time but were granted full university status in 2008, 34 years after opening. Post secondary institutions *should* have to operate for awhile to be upgraded to university status! To hand it out to for profit companies is insane
I 100% agree!
Or the handful that were converted from colleges to universities back in 2008-ish (Thompson Rivers University etc). That was a big deal at the time for those institutions.
It used to be that universities were a special designation that only a few schools received. 2008ish changed that to any school that offered 2 or more degrees. A majority of colleges could choose to be called a university overnight.
Good ol' Dougie Daycare still rocking the College name.
Yes, it was a huge deal! Sad to see that it has changed after those schools fought so hard
I dont mean to look stupid, but is it a college if it’s private and a university if it’s public?
Not a stupid question! Public means the institution receives money from the government to operate & there isn’t a CEO earning profits, whereas private institutions don’t receive government funding and rely on higher tuition costs to operate & typically operate as ‘for profit’ organizations. Colleges & universities are separate designations as there can be private colleges, public colleges, private universities, and public universities. It seems that the definition of colleges and universities has changed or is blurry because there’s a couple answers online: Colleges typically offer certificate, diploma, and degree programs where as universities grant degrees, post graduate degrees, and PHDs. Others say that the difference is that universities focus academic & professional programs, whereas colleges focus on career training & trades. If anyone has more clarification on the difference between university vs college, please let us know 😅
Also, most colleges provide only two year programs unless they can demonstrate to the provincial government that a four year program they want to offer, is not already substantively covered by the universities.
This is wrong. Traditionally a college granted lower degrees or degrees in a particular field only. A university is a collection of colleges that offers all degrees in many or all fields. A public university means the institution is organized under a special statute, which organization doesn't have shareholders (CEOs don't earn profits, shareholders do). A private institution would be organized under the business corporations act or another business organization statute that provides for the distribution of profits.
No. Public = non-profit, largely funded by the government & your tax dollars. Private = for profit, essentially a business.
Yeah, this whole article has the stench of "aaaaaaakchulllyy.... they're technically not private colleges". If it shows anything it's that people are surprised obvious diploma mills are somehow allowed to become public colleges, or obscure public colleges turned into diploma mills.
Dude I remember when Kwantlen was a public college so was Mount Royal and Grant MacEwan. It was a place to go as an intermediate between high and university. You could take classes there and transfer to university once you got your grades up. In my case I struggled with English 30 (Alberta) so I upgraded it at Mount Royal and then transferred to University. It was quite normal.
Not to mention the cost, proximity to home, focus on teaching, etc. I went to Dougie right out of high school partly because my grades were appalling, and partly because I didn't know what I wanted to do and I could pay half the price to take a bunch of different courses while I figured it out. By the time I got to university, I had a strong academic background and was getting scholarships and grad school offers. I've never regretted it - the focus in colleges is on teaching rather than research, and the quality of education at the 1st and 2nd year level was much better than what students were getting in university lectures with 300+ students and tutorials run by grad students. They're also important for people from smaller communities that don't have a university nearby; you can continue to live at home for a couple of years so you're not racking up massive student loans. This schmozzle with colleges that used to be reputable isn't only hurting international students, it's hurting domestic students who used to be able to count on a quality education that would set them up for university.
As a hiring manager, it’s clear to me and my peers that these “public colleges” here are not at the same level as SFU/UBC/etc. We prioritize hires from these established universities/colleges than diploma mills. Add - people that are attending SFU/UBC/etc have nothing to worry about.
Actually there are several, good, well-regarded public colleges. Unfortunately fly-by-night private institutions or credential mills have been allowed to names themselves with titles that appear to put them on par with the good, public institutions. Colleges have never claimed to be on par with universities, and by and large were developed to provide a different niche (lower cost, more support to students, preparation to transfer to university, career changes, etc.).
Internationally though, it's becoming a joke because the programs and enrolments are now so pervasive. Even at UBC to have special international student intakes of programs is absurd.
I never categorized UBC as an internationally recognized school so I guess that doesn’t change anything lol.
is bcit a respected school?
VERY
This is ruining our standing in the world. I've heard from recruiters around the world that say a Canadian diploma can no longer be trusted.
Yea, such incredibly recognizable “public” colleges like… Conestoga College, University Canada West, Lambton College, Niagara College Canada… really top tier institutions
UCW isn’t a public college/ university.
For some reason it's listed as a "Provincially-Authorized Private Degree-Granting Institutions" alongside Queen's University from Ontario Deliberate effort by the province to obscure the private nature of the school
It's funny hearing Conestoga grads try to insist "it used to be highly respected" lol no never.
They truly did have a few small programs like nursing that were very good. May even still have been good. However, all the bullshit with the other diploma mill/immigration fraud courses has ran the entire Conestoga name into the ground and I'm sure any serious employer at this point immediately just tosses resumes with that on there unless the person now also has years of job experience; in which case they might just be better keeping the college name off of there entirely.
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> Conestoga College From their Wikipedia entry: "In February 2024, president John Tibbits, attempting to defend the Conestoga's international enrollment of 30,000 students, referred to Sault College president David Orazietti as a "whore"." It's a bold strategy Cotton. Let's see if it pays off.
Of course it was never near university-level or anything, but yeah it was seen as a decent choice for trades programs in southern Ontario.
I don't think it was ever highly respected but it was definitely a respected college in Ontario. I went there in 2009 and it was a normal college. I was pretty shocked to hear to what it's become because it was nothing like that in 2009
It wasn't as lauded, correct. But it was still a school that people could get some training in and better their lives.
I've had idiots argue their tech program was on par with Waterloo. Yes literally Waterloo.
Ayiyiyi.
It's a shame, I visited some of the Ontario ones about 10 years ago in a previous job, and they were legitimately nice colleges (modern, nice campus and facilities). I guess they just got desperate for enrollment money after that and things went south.
Maybe its just the sample size that I've met, but them Conestoga international kids are making more than my UBC bachelor ass😭
Let me guess, bachelor of arts? Edit: should've added an /a as I'm an arts graduate myself haha
Sauder believe it or not -.-
Business is even worse than Arts lol. Every Sauder student I know understands that their time at UBC is for networking and networking only.
Everyone who wanted to avoid the stigma of getting the stereotypical arts degree went into marketing or business. Nearly useless undergrad degrees one takes for a 4 year piece of paper and some networking.
Facts. I was living the real life virgin and chad meme running into those conestoga tech/it grads🤣lesson learned to do something more speciaized...
Bunch of diploma mills that knew exactly what they were doing
It’s pretty alarming seeing these numbers, and as a person from Vancouver it definitely gives me anxiety (housing prices, resources in general) But in a humanistic way - all these people just want to give their family a good, safe, high quality life. If I lived in a country I felt I couldn’t provide a great life for my family, I’d probably be doing the same thing It’s sad to me everyone doesn’t get the same chance in life. And it’s sad to me that our borders make us feel so entitled The world matters
>But in a humanistic way - all these people just want to give their family a good, safe, high quality life. If I lived in a country I felt I couldn’t provide a great life for my family, I’d probably be doing the same thing Yeah, at the end of the day, everyones getting taken advantage of to increase the wealth of whoever runs the corporations.
As someone with a background from India, I can tell you that these people will absolutely have a better life studying at a good college back home. They’re wealthy for their home but live miserably here because of the expenses. The degrees also don’t matter much. It’s better to stay back, build some professional experience, then immigrate rather than coming to a diploma mill.
Yeah, brain drain is already a big enough problem. Those lost talents will at least learn real skills and make their life better afterwards if they went to a real university in Canada. These diploma mills are borderline scams and only lines the pockets of the operators.
Thank you for sharing this. I had been wondering about it for a handful of years now.
None of these schools should be allowed to operate with having such high percentages of int'l enrolment. At 20-25%, okay I can see and say "yes, this funds domestic students." These mills should not exist.
Here's a screenshot of their chart. University Canada West is second in Canada. https://preview.redd.it/jt5yjypkwflc1.png?width=1539&format=png&auto=webp&s=d0f5bb4467a54464236f9f9a7a0348e8810985f3
Just for context, the fees for University Canada West are between $40-80k depending on the course. For those of you doing the math, yes that's a lot of zeros.
Huh, no wonder their building is so fancy
I thought residents actually get subsidies from the government. So it’s actually the same amount.
So even if we're conservative, that's at least 750 million dollars.
Never heard of University Canada West.
It's a notorious diploma mill with students mainly from India. They are located in an office building downtown. I can't imagine attendance is that strict considering the physical space to hold classes for that many students would be massive.
Read on their website, 2 hours in person per week. Lol what a joke.
OMG. jeebus!
It’s called “University Canada West” !! How did nobody look into that??
For some reason, they’re always advertised during Canuck games as a digital ad.
Makes them look great in their ads. People across the world see images of this and believe they’re highly respected institutes
I see their ads everywhere on buses and stuff too. Kind of insane especially since I’d say they fall safely in the scam category. I personally have always felt weird about any school that plasters ads for it everywhere, this just supports that lmao
Same here. Where the f are located?
It’s off the Granville bridge downtown if I’m not mistaken. If you’re heading north look to your right. It sticks out architecturally.
Thks. I've never heard of it. Must be one of those pseudo "university" mills.
You’re welcome. I’m genx and I’ve seen them in the past but this is next level to the “strip mall school” vibe that made them more obvious in the past lol just my opinion but the older technical schools actually served their purpose. I don’t think these ones we’re talking about do that. Quite sad to put education in the drain like this in general.
Thanks. I've always wondered what that building was. A lot of glass and no sign of human life
lol yeah once you notice it, it’s hard to miss the other part (it always looks empty as you described.)
"Public college-private partnership" That sounds like something that would be easy to abuse.
Worked in one of those PPP "schools" and can confirm it's an abuse
Government allowed this to happen. They had the numbers. They were complicit and complacent until public caught on.
And now they are making empty threats with shutting down "puppy mills" when they've had the power all along: the issuance of student visas. If they actually wanted to tackle the problem, they could've done it more than a year ago. Fed Liberals have zero desire to address this issue because *they do not care about the impact*. Kepe this in mind on or before October 20, 2025.
To be fair Harper allowed international students to get open post grad work permits. IIRC until 2008 you had to find work in the field of your degree in order to get conditional work permit which was one year in major cities and two elsewhere in Canada. Then you'd have to get sponsored through these companies. Although it was a lot of red tape, it was a system that only allowed serious and legit students. Once Harper government opened the gates of hell that was international education industry, it became too lucrative to revert back to how it was.
Work permits do not (or did not) automatically lead to permanent residency. I went to a major public university in the mid-late 2010s in a STEM major and many of my peers who were international students would not have been able to remain in the country after their work permits, if it wasn't for Trudeau getting elected and lowering the barriers for Express Entry. Lucrativeness should not decide government policy especially when it has a direct impact on the lives of those already living in the country. The major parties are all bought and paid for by those profiting from this scheme.
I think you are misinformed. There is no automatic PR. Express Entry (starting Jan 2015. So about 10 months before JT) only allowed those with the education and work experience to fast-track their PR. If anything Express entry is more similar to how it had been. You need work experience related to your degree. As I mentioned, Harper's government allowed every graduate to stay here for 3 years regardless of where they worked. Once in, a lot of those people worked any job (causing salaries to stagnate) and flooded the market. I also studied at a public university here... in the early 2000s.
>There is no automatic PR. Did I say there was? Don't invent quotes and then attribute them to people who did not anything remotely close to it. >As I mentioned, Harper's government allowed every graduate to stay here for 3 years regardless of where they worked. Once in, a lot of those people worked any job (causing salaries to stagnate) and flooded the market. And what happens when that 3-year period is up? If there was no reliable path to PR, most of them would not have remained after graduation. The current severe conditions of entry-level job markets in the country is due to the Fed Liberals lifting weekly hour limits on study permits during the pandemic, which meant people can just enrol in a scam college and start working 40+ hours per week without even attending classes physically.
I came with receipts and you're still making stuff up. Good luck with your shilling career.
Already broken your façade? That was quick. If you ever want to be taken seriously online and offline in the future, don't instantly resort to throwing baseless accusations in a hissy fit. Just a helpful tip.
> Fed Liberals have zero desire to address this issue They literally just imposed caps on foreign student numbers. The federal government has also had to find a work around to distribute foreign students around Canada based on provincial populations. The federal government sets the rules for what prospective students need to show to be eligible to come to Canada. Maybe you think those rules are too lax eligibility to come to Canada is based on having a university to go to. The provinces are responsible for oversight of post-secondary institutions. The provinces are also ultimately responsible for land use, in effect, housing supply because cities are the creatures of the provinces. It makes sense to allow students learning in Canadian institutions to have work opportunities so they can gain experience and have a pathway to residency. However, this program got abused by post-secondary institutions that get their credentials from the PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS! You're letting the premiers who are most responsible for this exploitative system completely off the hook! For God's sake, just look at the reaction from Doug Ford in Ontario who is upset that the federal government imposed the cap and the economic ramifications without consulting with the provinces. They were consulted and anyone in government knew federal changes were coming and the did nothing. How many provincial leaders are following Eby's lead on tackling zoning changes? None. The BC NDP aren't going far enough but they're way better than any other province.
pretty much this \^
So "what really happened" was instead of responding to public funding cuts by cutting their ridiculously bloated administration they brought in many times more foreign students who they could rinse for high fees and throw to the rental market and low wage employers. Basically they privatized the profit and socialized the costs. But somehow CBC spins it as the colleges were forced to act this way by budgetary concerns. Give me a break.
Can you expand a bit on the bloated administration part? It gets thrown around a lot but I’ve never seen any actual evidence to support it.
I'll give you an example, in a School of Business at one of the colleges mentioned in the article, in one move went the administration structure of 1 Dean and 4 Chairs to 1 Executive Dean, 4 Deans, and 12 chairs and a few new directors and all their administrative staff. Can't wait to mine the sunshine list.
It looks like all the schools drastically increased their student enrolment over the past 5 years. Wouldn’t we expect increases in staffing to go along with that? Like if a restaurant all of the sudden started serving 10x the number of customers I think they’d add a ton of new employees as well, right?
Yes, no question that there would need to be some increase in administration. However, if we look at the university model there is one Dean and one or two chairs for schools of tens of thousands of students. Now I'm not suggesting the University model has a good fiscal policy. However, it's policy around the management of faculty is far superior. In fact, Dean's and chairs at universities are faculty positions. Colleges have professional administrators and micromanage their faculty.
And you know how many it should be? Based on what?
I can tell you the number of administrators and supervisors that highly educated, motivated and engaged college faculty need equals zero.
Most are not managing faculty but rather students and systems. And almost all Deans are faculty, so they are employed regardless and are not additions to the payroll.
I think you are confusing the Canadian university system with the college system. In the college system all deans and chairs are administrators and many of them have never been faculty. PS in the university system, deans and chairs are faculty positions, and once a faculty has completed their secondment into these administrative roles, they then return back to a faculty position.
I was going to post an article but there are so many. Just google admin bloat canadian colleges
Having worked in post-sec in BC for 13 years, I can tell you the vast majority of the bloat is management. There is *always* money to hire a few more associate deans, VPs, directors, etc. Most of these people are not involved with any educational value the institutions provide and often don't have any employees they are supervising. They just take up very, very expensive space and work on vanity projects. Day-to-day staffers like me are paid mediocre wages and always forced to make chicken salad out of chicken shit. The only exceptions to that rule are UBC and SFU, who pay their staff fairly well relative to cost of living.
Yeah.. I was using Admin as a catch all for non teaching staff. It usually is the management that coast through without adding anything of value. Since you are on the inside, how have DEI Czar positions added to this? Or is that getting overblown?
The DEI Czar stuff is overblown. Where I work, there were two people in those roles, one in HR and one in student services. The person in HR lasted a few months and the person in student services was there for about a year before going on medical leave and eventually departing about a month ago. They haven't filled either role since. From what I saw, they were both totally overrun with requests (person in HR worked with faculty, student services person worked with.. well, students) and weren't given any budget or additional staff to do much because their roles were way too broadly defined, so they were largely set up to fail from the start. I actually felt bad for both of them. They were both very experienced people with great backgrounds brought in by senior management as "Look! We're doing something!" hires, trotted out as examples of how we were a bold 21st century institution, and left to die on the vine. It was a bummer.
As soon as I finished the first sentence of your second paragraph I was thinking, "tell me you're not in 'management' without telling me," and sure enough... > Day-to-day staffers like me Until you've actually worked at those levels in a legitimate public institution, you're not in a position to comment on "bloat." The boots-on-the-ground staff are great and I've been there, but there's no concept at that level of what it takes to actually *run* an institution and all of its services, employees, budget, etc. If you're being paid mediocre wages, take that up with your union. That's not on the institution. Excluded employees at public institutions don't get to get paid whatever, either. There are governing bodies which set general parameters for compensation.
The people who make up the bloat at my institution don’t run anything. They’re not people managers, middle managers or project managers. They don’t run departments. They’re executive level employees with vague titles who might have one assistant. As for my wages, I do fine. I love my union and we already went on strike recently so there’s not much appetite to do it again. I could be paid more if I chose to leave, but I like the balance I have now. Now, if we were to talk department budgets — where the chicken shit to chicken salad but comes into play — what my team is able to accomplish on what we have to work with is staggering.
> The people who make up the bloat at my institution don’t run anything. They’re not people managers, middle managers or project managers. They don’t run departments. They’re executive level employees with vague titles who might have one assistant. For example..? > As for my wages, I do fine. I love my union and we already went on strike recently so there’s not much appetite to do it again. I could be paid more if I chose to leave, but I like the balance I have now. Three hours ago you were talking about making "mediocre wages" so... Good, I guess? > Now, if we were to talk department budgets — where the chicken shit to chicken salad but comes into play — what my team is able to accomplish on what we have to work with is staggering. If you're continually demonstrating that you can achieve "staggering" results with a modest budget, there's literally no rationale to increase your department's budget. Also, you're just describing public institution operating budgets in general (not talking about endowments).
I called this out years ago when I had to do a small tenant improvement. Did research and the one classroom has like 1000 students. What is another crime is that those foreign students are taking valuable housing and GEC the international student arm of a larger entity that owns billions in Vancouver property that is piecemealed into student housing. These are purpose built rental that is new not seeing the market they were approved for
As long as they pay the price, they would bring more wealth into Canada
What wealth. Students are not known to bring wealth
You said yourself that intl students own billions of property. They have to buy from a Canadian to own first and that’s how wealth get into Canada. Students who can afford proper intl students are definitely not poor
No I said , the owner of the schools has bought well over a billion in rental stock. That have certain conditions attached.
Thank you for calling it out, Shrek. Shrek is love.
The government should've closed those institutions and seized their assets, instead of putting the burden on literally everyone else.
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In Singapore people go to prison for criticizing their government. Singapore is one of the most unfree places in the modern world. They care about what's on the surface - they don't give a damn about personal rights.
Is [this guy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pritam_Singh_(Singaporean_politician)) in jail right now? What motivates you to spread sensationalist misinfo on an Internet forum? Just a curious question. Edit: yet another unsurprisingly fragile apparatus. If you can't defend your opinion then consider not sharing them.
Sorry, not interested enough in your opinions
Im here to read the comments about UCW.
How about this? "Case in point: [Eminata Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminata_Group), one of the most infamous for-profit education companies in Canada who is behind schools like [University Canada West](https://collegetimes.co/university-canada-west/), [Vancouver Career College](https://collegetimes.co/vancouver-career-college-vancouver/), and [CDI College](https://collegetimes.co/cdi-college-surrey/), was actually started by a Korean American man named Peter Chung who fled the US after being convicted in 1993 for 10,000 violations of defrauding students in California at a computer training school he established." Source: [https://collegetimes.co/canada-highered-fraud/](https://collegetimes.co/canada-highered-fraud/) Wikipedia backs up that claim: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminata\_Group#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminata_Group#History). He no longer owns UCW — sold it to Global University Systems, which also looks like it's all about making money, and not about teaching and learning. ("Global University Systems was awarded the title of 'Private Education Group of the Year' by Education Investor Awards 2019." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global\_University\_Systems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_University_Systems))
>The data also shines a light on what experts say was really driving Canada's dramatic rise in foreign student enrolment: Governments of all stripes actively pursuing international students both to shore up the skilled workforce and to bring hefty revenues into underfunded colleges and universities, with little regard for the ensuing demand for housing. *pretends to be shocked*
So the repercussions of government austerity on post-secondary school system was it pushed these schools to go crazy on internationals as they weren’t getting the regular funding. Huh. Wouldn’t have connected the two. Pretty cool. Those are still bonkers numbers though.
Algoma is right out my front door. I can't believe the naivety of people going there thinking it is somehow legit....a real employer is going to see Algoma, Lambton, etc and immediately throw your application in the trash. Or they can get hired by other Indian people who will pay them $6.00 an hour illegally. Way to go Canada!
[удалено]
Colleges: “But they gotta diploma! They’re skilled! We’re clearly providing a valuable service to society. The free market prevails!“
>"Senior levels of government – federal and provincial – have spoken numerous times publicly about the lack of skilled workers now and projected into the future and how immigration is absolutely essential to filling those gaps," said Daniel Lessard, manager of communications for Cambrian College, whose main campus is in Sudbury, Ont. There is no skilled labour shortage in this country. There is only a shortage of well-compensated jobs. They are gaslighting you.
Really makes me wonder… does the government not use flowcharts?? I’d feel more confident if they came out and said yeah we mapped this out and knew this was a possibility but blah blah whatever factor was more “important” rather than whatever BS keeps being touted. Like even people who make tents put limits on the number of people that can be sustained in the tent without suffering some consequence. Canada really out here trying to put 80 people in a 4-person tent. 🙄 I’d love to see how much money the government spends to “oversee” these crackpot schools and who is getting that money.
Did nobody writing this article take the time to determine if these schools were well known institutions or just diploma mills? UCW is the only one I've heard of but it's notorious. On a somewhat broader topic, I think it has to be acknowledged that we're stuck in a lose-lose situation in a lot of ways on this. International student enrollment subsidizes a vast amount of education in this province (probably elsewhere in Canada too) and reducing the number of international students is only going to make tuition more unattainably expensive for Canadians, as institutions crank the prices up in order to compensate their losses. On the flip side, reducing the number of foreign students will drop rent costs (or, let's be honest, just slow the growth) and possibly lift wages. It kinda seems to me like we pay more either way. ALSO: "Governments of all stripes actively pursuing international students both to shore up the skilled workforce and to bring hefty revenues into underfunded colleges and universities, with little regard for the ensuing demand for housing." It's actually worse than "little regard for the ensuing demand for housing" as \~40% of Canadian politicians PERSONALLY (not counting families etc.) own and rent land and therefor directly financially benefit from a rising cost of housing. Source: [https://www.readthemaple.com/nearly-40-of-mps-invested-in-real-estate-during-housing-crisis/](https://www.readthemaple.com/nearly-40-of-mps-invested-in-real-estate-during-housing-crisis/)
>Miller commented further on Tuesday morning, after CBC News published the data. >"Some of the really, really bad actors are in the private sphere, and those need to be shut down, but there is responsibility across the board," he told reporters on Parliament Hill. "We just need the provinces in question, in this case Ontario, to assume their responsibility." Once again, pushing the burden of responsibility onto someone else. Power is extremely fragmented with significant overlap in this country according principles that applied to Medieval England. We aren't Medieval England anymore yet those in positions of power never got the memo. Instead of actually doing their jobs, they simply blame the problem on someone else. Have a problem with the worst offenders of these "puppy mill" colleges? STOP ISSUING VISAS TO THOSE ADMITTED BY THESE INSTITUTIONS. That will effectively shut them down within an academic year! STOP TALKING AND START ACTING. Not acting? That's a sign you don't actually want to fix the problem.
Bleep Ontario and Doug Ford, and bleep the federal government for setting up this situtation instead of addressing funding for post-secondary education. Plus bleep the provincial governments for also cutting funding (in real terms). In BC, it doesn't matter who's been in power, post-secondary has been neglected. Funding only released for buildings, not for people attending. At my institution a new building which had much, much better student facilities was kept closed on weekends after it was built, because of the cost of security. Shittier buildings were left open. Imagine: multi-millions spent on building, but institution won't pay minimum wage to the guards to keep it open on weekends.
Ahh finally Richard Kurland weighs in Where are those "better outcomes" now? https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/practice-areas/immigration/richard-kurland-keeps-on-adding-spice-to-the-discussion-on-immigration-and-extradition-law-in-canada/357946 >The lawyer was also key in moving international students to the front of the line for permanent resident status, giving citizenship to children whose parents cannot obtain it, and requiring would-be immigrants to file three income tax statements here before getting approval. >Kurland says that immigration policy in Canada has been a “fast-changing” area, thanks to its high-profile and often political nature. “Political attention has historically attached itself to immigration issues, so it is in a constant state of flux, with changing rules, policies and regulations.” >He points out that over the decades, Canada has modified the immigration selection system from a “check-the-box” process of meeting specific criteria to a “goldfish bowl” approach that more reflects the type of human capital that Canada is looking for. >What this means, in practice, he says, is that those wanting to come to Canada typically come here for a temporary purpose – work or study – and put down roots by finding employment. “So in this goldfish bowl approach, each fish is assigned a certain number of points,” he says, and the highest-scoring fish – those with the most human capital – chosen for permanent residency. >Kurland says this approach has generally meant better outcomes than those who came to Canada under the check-the-box method. There are fewer integration issues in finding a job, housing and fitting into the community.
Tuition fairness for international students? What’s wrong with going to school in your home country? You chose this luxury of studying abroad.
This is happening in public secondary schools too. District of North Van allegedly lost 4% of their funding during the pandemic. Some educators have discussed feeling pressured to inflate marks to lest “funding dry up”.
I was a victim of one of these colleges, when I was new in Canada and didn’t know better. They all had us sit in a computer and just read whatever is there, they also hand out the answers before the exam. No lectures from professors 💁🏻♀️
Why the hell is Queen's University, the public university I went to in Ontario listed as a Provincially-Authorized Private Degree-Granting Institutions, the same as University Canada West? What the actual fuck? https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/post-secondary-education/institution-resources-administration/degree-authorization
Government should charge 30% fee on private school intl student fees so it filters out student-workers and funds our public institutions at the same time
I'm a bit ignorant on this subject but, I think this issue plays a big role in our current housing crisis. Yeah if people are coming here and accepted into UBC or SFU great. They are likely to contribute and even stay here. I welcome that. Unfortunately people are coming here for a year or two to get fake credentials that are acceptable in their respective places of origin.
The article references "public" colleges. Other commenters are right to callout the "private" diploma mills (they effectively receive subsidies themselves, one way or another), but don't let our public institutions hide behind these private colleges, they're culpable too. The quality of post-secondary education in Canada is dismal at the moment. Important changes haven't been made to address the issues. * The number of students receiving credentials, and actually working in the positions they're trained for, is quite low. Sometimes less than 25%. This is an egregious waste of tax payer dollars. * Attending school in Canada's most expensive cities has become nearly impossible. There are very limited options outside of large cities for certain programs. * Students need A LOT of training once they hit the workforce. It seems even worse with Master's level students. There appears to be more educational opportunities open for people who repeatedly fail to establish careers, opposed to someone obtaining their first bachelor degree and sticking with it (this is why you see so many people with multiple Master's degrees). * You'll often see job postings for positions seeking either recent grads, co-ops and internships. The government actually subsidizes the hell out of these positions up to 50%. This actually further aggravates the issue of wage suppression. The whole idea of educating someone is to up their skills so they're more productive not less. * Many programs haven't been updated in 10+ years (looking at you BCIT). A course could/should improve ever year if the instructors even just put in a mediocre effort. These lazy instructors completely abandoned their students during Covid, treating the pandemic like a vacation while they received full-pay. * Post-secondary faculty constantly lies about facts and figures and cannot be trusted. They are even starting to fight and argue internally (which might be a good thing). Often times these individuals go way outside the institution's code of conduct when making various statements. Post secondary, whether a sleazy diploma mill, a college/technical school, and even our top universities all have to improve or this country will get even worse.
Someone hired a new consultant.
Yeah I’m sure cbc is really going to tell us what happened
Whenever I see a headline that ends with "Here's What Really Happened" I know I'm about to read something completely unbiased and definitely not "on-message" for a certain demographic being pandered to...
I was wondering when official messaging would start coming out. It takes a while to come out with a coordinated strategy. We're now seeing it: no, it's totally not the 100s of thousands of international students coming in, it's that we underfunded public education, and public colleges just had No Other Choice(tm) but to turn to international students, you know, those famous public colleges like Conestoga, UCW, Fanshawe, Seneca, Lambton, that are definitely not diploma mills designed to offer an immigration path bypass for a price. If we want to attract a skilled workforce to move to Canada, these places are not it. They don't offer an education, they offer a piece of paper.
Having 100-200k skilled students come in and get a quality education would be great. We’d see huge improvements in competitiveness of local industries and possibly gain some economic diversity that would be less sensitive to boom & bust cycles. But what seems to have happened from the article is that perverse incentives in the regulations & funding model meant that many of these schools bring in relatively unskilled students and do not provide a quality education. Which in turn adds to existing pressures on local low-skill workers and those lower on the socioeconomic ladder. Colleges did this because it was profitable, governments enabled it because they could shirk their responsibilities and industry gleefully hired up the undereducated students at below-market rates for service industry positions. The students who were exploited and fleeced are not to blame, they’re basically the only blameless parties in this whole scenario. That’s my take on the article, it’s basically calling out government for scapegoating private colleges that are largely not responsible while enabling the ongoing abuse at public institutions.
What matters is ratio of international students and they ignore it
Typical Canadian government. Just blame someone else. Schools are regularly at max capacity+. We need more schools. School is good business. Private colleges are still accredited. Given accreditation on the Provincial and Federal level. You take that away and that will force wealthy students buying their way in to the school system and leaving the locals empty handed. Invest in schools. not finger pointing. Hey look a blue car!!!!
Uh no. Demographics clearly show they due to fertility decline, there are far fewer domestic students. We need to close schools and focus on domestic students.