Lots to agree with in this piece but also some problems. The knee jerk reaction that caused the shut down of training visas was because, at least in Ontario, the provincial government both froze domestic tuition and turned a blind eye to colleges recruiting unprecedented numbers of international students to make up the difference. In towns like Kitchener, home to Conestoga, you bet the impact on housing was not spurious. Moreover the numbers of temporary foreign permits fed into the xenophobic attitude of too many immigrants, regardless of the cause. The answer is tighten the visa process, rethink the automatic landed immigrant status and reduce the caps on graduate and postdoctoral trainees.
My other disagreement is in the need to limit the topics of recruitment classes. Sure, AI, etc. are hot topics but by predefining future strengths we deny the fundamental promise of science, which is to prepare minds to tackle big questions that we don’t yet appreciate the importance of.
The US academic sector is undergoing massive disruption and we are fooling ourselves if we think we can attract a few names to make a difference. Rather, we should do better in making our system more attractive for researchers from anywhere, including Canadians - that way we still win even if “they” don’t come.
Canada has worked for over 50 years in the shadow of the US. To succeed in this new reality we need to define ourselves in new ways including how we are different from, and therefore might take advantage of the changes in, the US.
Prof Manfredi would strengthen his case if he had acknowledged that some post secondary institutions - almost entirely colleges, not universities- had in recent years accepted far more international visa students than
(Sorry- posted in error before completing my thoughts. ) …more international visa students than was wise, to the extent that at some colleges they now comprised more than half of all students enrolled. Colleges did this because they were desperate to increase operating revenues, faced with provincial government chronic underfunding. The federal government had no choice but to cap student visas, to begin to restore them to previous numbers. That said, yes let’s support more funded positions at universities. And while we are at it , let’s eliminate identity group membership requirements for hiring that some universities set for Canada Research positions. While I support diversity and fairness, I do not want my tax dollars to support hiring that discriminates based on race, gender or other personal identity characteristics.
And I, Connie, do not want my tax dollars used to hire someone who may be less than stellar but meet some perceived (nonsensical) need. So, the best candidate is the best candidate, no matter the color, no matter the gender, no matter etc., etc.
The Canadian Liberal government completely disagrees with you, and has done everything it could to reject and suppress views such as yours. And so have Canadian universities.
Well, to say that the LPC government disagrees with me is no surprise as I absolutely disagree with it. As for the universities, well, Forrest Gump said it best: "Stupid is as stupid does." Their actions to essentially disadvantage and deplatform "unpopular" (in their eyes) people is profoundly undemocratic and, well, just plain awful.
Can we please separate international students in serious programmes at esteemed universities like McGill or U of T or UBC (which is what we’re talking about when we think about poaching talent from US universities) from the discussion of the semi-shady international-student diploma mills (________ Community College, Brampton Campus)
They are NOT the same. Recruiting the world’s talent to come here for science or serious humanities education is not the same as funnelling 10,000 students through a “business administration” degree or whatever.
We should shut down the latter but keep the ability to attract the world’s talent to the top universities.
The massive numbers of “students” who work 40 hours a week off campus absolutely did impact housing prices. Call me old-fashioned but if you are working 40 hours a week off-campus, you’re not actually a student, that’s just a giveaway to Timmies and DoorDash with another TFW channel.
Many of the jihadi terrorist leaders are medical doctors. Technical training, even in advanced fields, does not guarantee sanity or respect for other people.
The point he's making is that our international student system has long been viewed as a backdoor to immigrating to Canada, and the system got completely out of control over the last 5 years. The vast majority of international students were taking business diplomas etc, when we need doctors, nurses, and plumbers.
Great guest piece by Chris Manfredi. Love this section ...
"A new suite of industrial research chairs embedded in commercial settings, closely aligned with important sectors such as AI, cleantech, bio manufacturing, and quantum."
My only quibble is that we have also failed in these sectors, often, to translate, apply, and commercialize research, either due to cost-containment/short-termism in public procurement, or a lack of receptor capacity in the private sector.
Manfredi's piece also aligs with our other enduring, if not endemic, economic challenge, our OECD bottom-ranking productivity. But that is a bigger issue for another day.
Prof. Manfredi writes about the "spurious link between international students and housing shortages." I don't think it is spurious for those students looking for a place to live or non-students who cannot find a place to live because of the influx of international students. And note we are not talking about mid-career academics but students in spurious programs on campuses far from the main campus that were created just to generate income for the university.
I sympathize with our Canadian universities who had their provincial and federal funding cut. But I don’t agree that the solution should be more international students. It should be to restore proper funding.
Right now we’ve incentivized schools to bring in foreign students to pay the bills. They would sooner admit a foreign student with avg marks over a Canadian student with high marks.
I miss the days when it was easy to find a time series of GERD, BERD, etc... but STIC is long gone.
When looking to attract research talent I don't disagree that this is an opportune time to buttress our universities. I would not, however, assume universities are the only instrument for doing so.
The reason I was looking for the above data was I seem to remember an argument that increasing HERD (as a % of overall R&D) has not led to commensurate economic benefits for Canadians.
Which is to say, we might want to also consider what role a reinvigorated NRC, etc. could play.
Agree with the ideas for change and hopes for brain gain in this guest column. Can one hope that the leaders debates might shed light on how each party would undo the recent ill-thought federal restrictions on international
students? and do so with speed?? Goes back to the need for a comprehensive talent strategy for the ‘new’ industrial policy. Far too little ink on that so far - including the lack of credit transfer and academic mobility inside Canada’s 13 post-secondary systems. And fully agree with Walter that failure of commercialization of research remains a pernicious Canadian innovation problem. Some of us had proposed solutions for that challenge - which had fallen on deaf ears in Ottawa policy circles. 🤦♀️
Some good ideas but what we see so far is cherry picking by the ‘ wealthy’ universities.We need far more than the occasional Snyder captured by U of T. How about all the solid universities in Canada such as the Universities of Saskatchewan, NB, Carleton etc - there are at least 30 in this class -without huge endowments that are underfunded The provinces have to step up. Don’t hold your breath.
Thank you, Paul Wells, for running op-eds by guest writers like Mr Manfredi. It helps to make your substack more appealing than most. Your guest's perspective certainly encouraged me to rethink the issue of international students, a topic which, as he observed, has been unfairly linked to the housing shortage by those who don't understand the importance of this crucial services export (and the role of universities in Canadian society).
In a nutshell, our housing shortage reflects policy failures going back decades, and perpetrated by all orders of government in this country.
Rephrasing an earlier comment here: I've been writing about universities for 25 years. If I can get the VP academic at one of Canada's two most prestigious universities to say he can't afford to go fishing in Trump's waters because successive governments have dropped the ball on higher education in Canada, you'd better believe I'm going to get that piece. Which was entirely my idea, and frankly the surprise is that he was kind enough to write it. The thought that any charitable foundation in the land would even have the bandwidth to micromanage at that level is quaint. This is what you get when you get Paul Wells. Refund requests will be speedily granted.
McGill, and I'm sure our other universities, already rely heavily on donations and there is a limit on how much money they can get that way. In McGill's case, 45 million in one year is a very big hole to fill!
Your selection of topics, authors, defense of your decisions are all reasons that I, for one, will NOT be seeking a refund. Mr. W., you are cheap at twice the price (of course, please don't ....).
I liked the analogy about playing moneyball - looking to secure a different talent set at a different stage in their career. That makes sense to me.
I would happily acknowledge that some portion of an university business is a public good. Giving students a good education for life is important, whether thru university, college, trades education, or thru the school of hard knocks, these can all contribute to our society, thus should be broadly supported. Not to mention the benefit of research. So I wish the universities in Canada well, and I hope they can work thru this period.
Another commenter used the phrase knee jerk to describe the reaction to our housing crisis and the link to foreign students. That's bang on. It's tough, I am sure, to tell the public, hold on, we've got to figure this out. But that would be a much better approach. Take a while to figure out both the problem and what we are trying to accomplish.
Thanks Paul for giving up your soapbox for the week.
International students are the main source of supplementary income. You can’t pay researchers while you’re losing revenue because your international student levels are capped. That would change if transfers from provincial governments went up, but as a very robust trend they’ve been going in the opposite direction for years. This is probably something I should make clearer every time I write about this issue, because it’s probably not obvious.
Many researchers were engaged in ill advised subjects such as « Gain of fonction ». Money was available to attract scientists. It’s normal to see turmoils when such programs are terminated. But Society needs to repurpose as many clever brains possible on usefull topics.
McGill's situation in Quebec is particular as tuition fees are determined by the provincial government and in previous years, before the CAQ introduced the new law which in effect limits the number of non-francophone students in English institutions, the university could keep the "excess" revenue for out-of- province and non-Canadian students' tuition fees. These fees were much higher than for in-province students. This was a sizeable chunk of revenue lost and the reason why McGill now faces a 45 million budget cut in 2026, and a further 30 million per year for 2027-2028.
The CAQ felt (no proof given) that the non-francophone students at McGill and Concordia, as well as those the English CEGEPS (colleges) attracted, were causing Montréal to become "anglified" and passed measures to "stop" this - basically pulling the rug out from under those institutions as far as recruitment, staffing and expansion go. The "French" aspect of Quebec colleges/universities meant that most of the students in this province were not immigrants - other than at the English institutions. The situation for Quebec's universities is a very different one from elsewhere in Canada, which is why some of Prof Manfredi's comments don't seem to relate...
I'm a proud McGill alumni & retiree, and hope that the provincial government in Quebec wakes up and modifies their policy to allow our universities to meet the opportunity the US is inadvertently giving us.
“Why, as a country, we would deny ourselves these benefits because of a spurious link between international students and housing shortages, or for other reasons, remains a mystery to me.”
This was such a strange and dare I say spurious take on the link between house prices and rent and supply and *demand*.
I would suggest that institutions of higher learning take more responsibility for housing their students if they truly want to help their cause here. Mike Moffatt would be one excellent resource they could draw on.
Lots to agree with in this piece but also some problems. The knee jerk reaction that caused the shut down of training visas was because, at least in Ontario, the provincial government both froze domestic tuition and turned a blind eye to colleges recruiting unprecedented numbers of international students to make up the difference. In towns like Kitchener, home to Conestoga, you bet the impact on housing was not spurious. Moreover the numbers of temporary foreign permits fed into the xenophobic attitude of too many immigrants, regardless of the cause. The answer is tighten the visa process, rethink the automatic landed immigrant status and reduce the caps on graduate and postdoctoral trainees.
My other disagreement is in the need to limit the topics of recruitment classes. Sure, AI, etc. are hot topics but by predefining future strengths we deny the fundamental promise of science, which is to prepare minds to tackle big questions that we don’t yet appreciate the importance of.
The US academic sector is undergoing massive disruption and we are fooling ourselves if we think we can attract a few names to make a difference. Rather, we should do better in making our system more attractive for researchers from anywhere, including Canadians - that way we still win even if “they” don’t come.
Canada has worked for over 50 years in the shadow of the US. To succeed in this new reality we need to define ourselves in new ways including how we are different from, and therefore might take advantage of the changes in, the US.
Prof Manfredi would strengthen his case if he had acknowledged that some post secondary institutions - almost entirely colleges, not universities- had in recent years accepted far more international visa students than
(Sorry- posted in error before completing my thoughts. ) …more international visa students than was wise, to the extent that at some colleges they now comprised more than half of all students enrolled. Colleges did this because they were desperate to increase operating revenues, faced with provincial government chronic underfunding. The federal government had no choice but to cap student visas, to begin to restore them to previous numbers. That said, yes let’s support more funded positions at universities. And while we are at it , let’s eliminate identity group membership requirements for hiring that some universities set for Canada Research positions. While I support diversity and fairness, I do not want my tax dollars to support hiring that discriminates based on race, gender or other personal identity characteristics.
And I, Connie, do not want my tax dollars used to hire someone who may be less than stellar but meet some perceived (nonsensical) need. So, the best candidate is the best candidate, no matter the color, no matter the gender, no matter etc., etc.
The Canadian Liberal government completely disagrees with you, and has done everything it could to reject and suppress views such as yours. And so have Canadian universities.
Well, to say that the LPC government disagrees with me is no surprise as I absolutely disagree with it. As for the universities, well, Forrest Gump said it best: "Stupid is as stupid does." Their actions to essentially disadvantage and deplatform "unpopular" (in their eyes) people is profoundly undemocratic and, well, just plain awful.
Can we please separate international students in serious programmes at esteemed universities like McGill or U of T or UBC (which is what we’re talking about when we think about poaching talent from US universities) from the discussion of the semi-shady international-student diploma mills (________ Community College, Brampton Campus)
They are NOT the same. Recruiting the world’s talent to come here for science or serious humanities education is not the same as funnelling 10,000 students through a “business administration” degree or whatever.
We should shut down the latter but keep the ability to attract the world’s talent to the top universities.
The massive numbers of “students” who work 40 hours a week off campus absolutely did impact housing prices. Call me old-fashioned but if you are working 40 hours a week off-campus, you’re not actually a student, that’s just a giveaway to Timmies and DoorDash with another TFW channel.
Many of the jihadi terrorist leaders are medical doctors. Technical training, even in advanced fields, does not guarantee sanity or respect for other people.
The point he's making is that our international student system has long been viewed as a backdoor to immigrating to Canada, and the system got completely out of control over the last 5 years. The vast majority of international students were taking business diplomas etc, when we need doctors, nurses, and plumbers.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/international-students-college-university-fields-study-data-1.7195530
Great guest piece by Chris Manfredi. Love this section ...
"A new suite of industrial research chairs embedded in commercial settings, closely aligned with important sectors such as AI, cleantech, bio manufacturing, and quantum."
My only quibble is that we have also failed in these sectors, often, to translate, apply, and commercialize research, either due to cost-containment/short-termism in public procurement, or a lack of receptor capacity in the private sector.
Manfredi's piece also aligs with our other enduring, if not endemic, economic challenge, our OECD bottom-ranking productivity. But that is a bigger issue for another day.
Prof. Manfredi writes about the "spurious link between international students and housing shortages." I don't think it is spurious for those students looking for a place to live or non-students who cannot find a place to live because of the influx of international students. And note we are not talking about mid-career academics but students in spurious programs on campuses far from the main campus that were created just to generate income for the university.
I sympathize with our Canadian universities who had their provincial and federal funding cut. But I don’t agree that the solution should be more international students. It should be to restore proper funding.
Right now we’ve incentivized schools to bring in foreign students to pay the bills. They would sooner admit a foreign student with avg marks over a Canadian student with high marks.
That isn’t right.
I miss the days when it was easy to find a time series of GERD, BERD, etc... but STIC is long gone.
When looking to attract research talent I don't disagree that this is an opportune time to buttress our universities. I would not, however, assume universities are the only instrument for doing so.
The reason I was looking for the above data was I seem to remember an argument that increasing HERD (as a % of overall R&D) has not led to commensurate economic benefits for Canadians.
Which is to say, we might want to also consider what role a reinvigorated NRC, etc. could play.
Agree with the ideas for change and hopes for brain gain in this guest column. Can one hope that the leaders debates might shed light on how each party would undo the recent ill-thought federal restrictions on international
students? and do so with speed?? Goes back to the need for a comprehensive talent strategy for the ‘new’ industrial policy. Far too little ink on that so far - including the lack of credit transfer and academic mobility inside Canada’s 13 post-secondary systems. And fully agree with Walter that failure of commercialization of research remains a pernicious Canadian innovation problem. Some of us had proposed solutions for that challenge - which had fallen on deaf ears in Ottawa policy circles. 🤦♀️
Excellent piece!
Some good ideas but what we see so far is cherry picking by the ‘ wealthy’ universities.We need far more than the occasional Snyder captured by U of T. How about all the solid universities in Canada such as the Universities of Saskatchewan, NB, Carleton etc - there are at least 30 in this class -without huge endowments that are underfunded The provinces have to step up. Don’t hold your breath.
Thank you, Paul Wells, for running op-eds by guest writers like Mr Manfredi. It helps to make your substack more appealing than most. Your guest's perspective certainly encouraged me to rethink the issue of international students, a topic which, as he observed, has been unfairly linked to the housing shortage by those who don't understand the importance of this crucial services export (and the role of universities in Canadian society).
In a nutshell, our housing shortage reflects policy failures going back decades, and perpetrated by all orders of government in this country.
Disagree. I pay for Wells, I want Wells on my feed, not Max Bell Fellowship quid pro quos
Rephrasing an earlier comment here: I've been writing about universities for 25 years. If I can get the VP academic at one of Canada's two most prestigious universities to say he can't afford to go fishing in Trump's waters because successive governments have dropped the ball on higher education in Canada, you'd better believe I'm going to get that piece. Which was entirely my idea, and frankly the surprise is that he was kind enough to write it. The thought that any charitable foundation in the land would even have the bandwidth to micromanage at that level is quaint. This is what you get when you get Paul Wells. Refund requests will be speedily granted.
McGill, and I'm sure our other universities, already rely heavily on donations and there is a limit on how much money they can get that way. In McGill's case, 45 million in one year is a very big hole to fill!
Your selection of topics, authors, defense of your decisions are all reasons that I, for one, will NOT be seeking a refund. Mr. W., you are cheap at twice the price (of course, please don't ....).
As always, well done.
I liked the analogy about playing moneyball - looking to secure a different talent set at a different stage in their career. That makes sense to me.
I would happily acknowledge that some portion of an university business is a public good. Giving students a good education for life is important, whether thru university, college, trades education, or thru the school of hard knocks, these can all contribute to our society, thus should be broadly supported. Not to mention the benefit of research. So I wish the universities in Canada well, and I hope they can work thru this period.
Another commenter used the phrase knee jerk to describe the reaction to our housing crisis and the link to foreign students. That's bang on. It's tough, I am sure, to tell the public, hold on, we've got to figure this out. But that would be a much better approach. Take a while to figure out both the problem and what we are trying to accomplish.
Thanks Paul for giving up your soapbox for the week.
Manfredi makes very good points here.
Isn’t this about attracting staff ie professors and associate professors as opposed to students?
International students are the main source of supplementary income. You can’t pay researchers while you’re losing revenue because your international student levels are capped. That would change if transfers from provincial governments went up, but as a very robust trend they’ve been going in the opposite direction for years. This is probably something I should make clearer every time I write about this issue, because it’s probably not obvious.
Or have enough super rich Canadians that can contribute to the endowments of Canadian universities?
Actually, on second thought, let’s not try to encourage wealth polarization just in hopes of some of it trickling down to the schools.
It is, but research faculty need students, so limiting their pool of graduate students makes coming here less attractive.
Many researchers were engaged in ill advised subjects such as « Gain of fonction ». Money was available to attract scientists. It’s normal to see turmoils when such programs are terminated. But Society needs to repurpose as many clever brains possible on usefull topics.
McGill's situation in Quebec is particular as tuition fees are determined by the provincial government and in previous years, before the CAQ introduced the new law which in effect limits the number of non-francophone students in English institutions, the university could keep the "excess" revenue for out-of- province and non-Canadian students' tuition fees. These fees were much higher than for in-province students. This was a sizeable chunk of revenue lost and the reason why McGill now faces a 45 million budget cut in 2026, and a further 30 million per year for 2027-2028.
The CAQ felt (no proof given) that the non-francophone students at McGill and Concordia, as well as those the English CEGEPS (colleges) attracted, were causing Montréal to become "anglified" and passed measures to "stop" this - basically pulling the rug out from under those institutions as far as recruitment, staffing and expansion go. The "French" aspect of Quebec colleges/universities meant that most of the students in this province were not immigrants - other than at the English institutions. The situation for Quebec's universities is a very different one from elsewhere in Canada, which is why some of Prof Manfredi's comments don't seem to relate...
I'm a proud McGill alumni & retiree, and hope that the provincial government in Quebec wakes up and modifies their policy to allow our universities to meet the opportunity the US is inadvertently giving us.
“Why, as a country, we would deny ourselves these benefits because of a spurious link between international students and housing shortages, or for other reasons, remains a mystery to me.”
This was such a strange and dare I say spurious take on the link between house prices and rent and supply and *demand*.
I would suggest that institutions of higher learning take more responsibility for housing their students if they truly want to help their cause here. Mike Moffatt would be one excellent resource they could draw on.