Indian students come for permanent residency, not an education

Canada’s Globe & Mail has published a detailed report on how hundreds of thousands of Indian students have inundated Canada in search of permanent residency:

Grey Matters, which sees 7,000 to 8,000 students each month at its 56 locations in India, is one of many such centres in Chandigarh’s sprawling Sector-17 market, a hub of retail stores and education institutes that has become known as a one-stop shop for young Indians itching to begin their adult lives abroad.

Businesses like this all over the country send tens of thousands of Indian students like Manjinder to Canada each year – 105,192 were enrolled in Canadian universities and colleges in the 2018-2019 school year, the most recent period for which data are available. They promise a new life, jobs, houses and prosperity and – ever since the federal government introduced a series of programs in 2009 that opened the gates more widely to Indian students – a chance at the ultimate prize: Canadian citizenship…

Bringing Indian students to Canada has become a lucrative business spanning two continents. In India, there are language schools, recruiters, immigration consultants and lenders, all of whom have profited handsomely from the study-abroad craze. Once students arrive in Canada, postsecondary institutions, landlords, immigration consultants and employers profit from their growing presence…

“Everyone has a little piece of this setup. And by having a piece, everyone is blind to the whole picture,” says Gurpreet Malhotra, the executive director of Indus Community Services, a non-profit in Peel Region…

The vast majority of Indian students… are registered at colleges (73 per cent). Students and recruitment businesses interviewed by The Globe say this is because most Indian students want to come to Canada to live rather than learn, and registering in a college program offers a cheaper and faster path to settling here (after landing in Canada on a student visa, they can get a postgraduate work permit and start logging the employment hours necessary to apply for permanent residency and, down the road, Canadian citizenship)…

At Broadway Consultants, a study-abroad consultancy in Patiala, 80 per cent of students choose to go to Brampton because there are so many private colleges in the city, which are seen as more affordable and easier to gain admission to with a lower language proficiency score. “It’s not the degree they are after, but a route to a better life and money,” says Broadway’s executive director, Baljinder Singh…

In an industry the size of India’s, with so many players, addressing exploitation in the recruitment process is difficult. There are roughly 5,000 to 6,000 IELTS centres in Punjab alone offering coaching for students who will take the standardized English test, according to The Tribune, an English newspaper based in Chandigarh. In 2018, Niagara College retested hundreds of international students who were suspected of providing fraudulent IELTS scores on their language admission tests, since so many were struggling in class due to poor English skills…

Mr. Sarwara finally got admission to CDI College to study web design… In his first few days in class, he was stunned to see that nearly every other student was also Indian. Most were teenagers and seemed woefully unprepared for the basics of the course. “You know what they used to say to me? ‘Brother, save my file. I don’t know how to save a file,’” he said…

Gurpreet Malhotra, the executive director of Indus Community Services, says he’s come to see private colleges in Canada as being in the business of immigration, not education.

“The colleges are getting easy money, and the students are getting an easy way to get to Canada”…

Mr. Malhotra, of Indus Community Services, says if the federal government is bringing so many students here as part of a larger economic and immigration strategy…

“The reason Canada set this up is so that we can grab an immigrant young. They’re going to have children, set up a house, all that kind of stuff and become part of the Canadian society,” he says.

It is exactly the same situation here in Australia.

A recent study by IDP Connect revealed how the primary motivation for Indian students to study in Australia is to gain permanent residency and work rights:

IDP Connect’s New Horizons research shows international students consider migration incentives and employment opportunities when choosing where, what and how to study. “We’ve seen a significant decrease in interest from Indian students looking to study in Australia,” said Wharton, who said a key motivation for Indian students’ decision to study abroad include migration and face-to-face learning opportunities…

Wharton said if Australia can communicate a roadmap towards a large-scale return of international students, with clear pathways towards employment and migration outcomes, Australia could be in a good position to retain its status as a leading study abroad destination…

“We asked them if Australia brought in migration incentives to study their chosen fields of study, would that bring Australia into their consideration set? And 64% said they would.” He believes this could allow Australia to take some ground back and get students who hadn’t otherwise been considering Australia as their study abroad destination.

Their New Horizons research also shows that strong drivers for international students include migration incentives and post-study work rights. “If you can offer those two things to two students, that could have a very positive impact,” he said.

Last year, the former vice-chancellor of Macquarie University, Professor Steven Schwartz, also admitted that many international students only study in Australia to gain working rights and permanent residency:

[Professor Schwartz] said foreign students flock to courses likely to lead to jobs and permanent residency…

“Permanent residency is one of the main motivations to study in Australia’…

“If suddenly permanent residency was given to people who study poetry, it’s likely they’d all be doing poetry.”

New Delhi-based education consultant Gauravdeep Bumra noted the same:

“Most Indian students choose to study abroad, often at the cost of thousands of dollars, because they have a long-term goal of getting permanent residency, be it in Australia, Canada or the UK. As a result, most students stuck offshore have deferred their studies instead of choosing to complete their degrees online”…

“The day they open their borders, the student intake numbers will uptick…”

As has The Australian’s international education shill, Tim Dodd:

“Too many of the expanding numbers of students from India and the sub continent were in low quality, generic business courses, and hoping for permanent residency without having in-demand skills”.

Over recent months we have witnessed the edu-migration industry lobby the federal government to give permanent residency to students in order to increase Australia’s attractiveness as a study destination. That shows how much of an immigration industry education really is.

But any move to ramp-up international student numbers and immigration will also require Australia to reach further down the quality barrel and erode entry standards even further. Doing so would be disastrous for the long-run productivity and prosperity of Australia, which hinges upon quality education

Instead of lowering the quality bar to boost numbers, Australia’s international education system should target a smaller intake of higher quality students via:

1. Raising entry standards (particularly English-language proficiency);
2. Raising financial requirements needed to enter Australia; and
3. Removing the link between studying, work rights and permanent residency.

These reforms would lift student quality, would raise genuine export revenues per student, would remove competition in the jobs market, and would lower enrolment numbers to sensible and sustainable levels that are more in line with international norms.

They would also help to improve teaching standards and the experience for domestic students, which should be our tertiary education sector’s number one priority.

In short, international education needs to become a genuine export industry rather than a people importing immigration industry. We must restore Australia’s higher education sector back to being about ‘higher learning’ rather than ‘higher earning’.

Sadly, we all know these reforms won’t happen. Our policy makers will instead crater entry and teaching standards to entice as many warm bodies to Australia as they can get. Because the ‘growth lobby’ and edu-migration industry rent-seekers pull the policy strings.