In my current article for The PIE, I mirrored on how Canada’s worldwide schooling system has been shifting via a interval of turbulence and uncertainty, highlighting the compounding results of the previous a number of years, abrupt coverage shifts, uneven communication, and ongoing immigration challenges which have created instability and eroded belief amongst college students, households and international companions.
This second piece builds on that dialogue. Canada’s worldwide schooling sector continues to navigate a turbulent interval, one that’s reshaping how establishments, college students, and communities make selections right this moment and plan for tomorrow.
But inside this turbulence lies a possibility: to chart a clearer, extra deliberate path ahead that restores confidence and strengthens Canada’s international position. There isn’t any easy repair, however by analyzing how different nations and Canadian provinces have approached comparable challenges, we are able to start figuring out the constructing blocks of a extra steady, coordinated and sustainable technique.
If Canada is to navigate this second and rebuild stability and credibility, it should transfer past reactive decision-making. What is required is a transparent, long-term framework, one grounded in proof, predictable funding, and collaboration throughout governments, establishments, employers and communities. Classes from Germany, New Zealand and British Columbia display that extra deliberate and sustainable approaches aren’t solely potential, however obligatory.
Classes from Germany’s mannequin
Germany gives a compelling instance of how worldwide schooling could be built-in right into a broader nationwide financial and demographic technique. Whereas the contexts differ, Germany’s constitutional division of accountability for schooling between the federal authorities and the Länder is in some ways just like Canada’s federal–provincial construction, making its strategy value analyzing. One vital distinction is tuition: in most areas, worldwide college students pay minimal or no charges, reflecting a long-term view that the actual return on funding comes from a long time of workforce participation and tax income fairly than short-term tuition revenue.
A 2025 study by the German Financial Institute, commissioned by the German Tutorial Change Service, discovered that the 79,000 worldwide college students who started diploma applications in 2022 may generate between €7.36 billion and €26 billion in lifetime internet fiscal beneficial properties for the general public sector coffers. Even underneath conservative projections, public funding in worldwide college students pays for itself inside two to 5 years after commencement. Worldwide graduates may offset as much as 20% of Germany’s projected GDP slowdown as a result of demographic change over the subsequent decade.
Whereas Canada’s coverage setting, tuition constructions, and labour market integration differ, this illustrates what could be achieved with a coordinated nationwide framework that aligns larger schooling with workforce wants.
A key a part of this strategy is the Campus Initiative for International Talents and the FIT program. These initiatives fund universities to organize college students for educational life, assist their integration, and join them with employers earlier than and after commencement. Additionally they put money into expanded profession companies, focused retention applications and partnerships with trade to make sure smoother transitions into the labour market. Critically, that is made potential by predictable, multi-year federal funding, permitting establishments to maintain, refine and scale initiatives over time whereas sharing classes throughout the sector.
New Zealand’s managed development strategy
New Zealand provides one other instructive mannequin, one that’s nonetheless in its early phases however marks a shift from earlier approaches. Following a interval of post-pandemic restoration, the federal government launched the International Education Going for Growth technique in 2025, setting a ten-year goal to just about double the sector’s financial contribution by 2034. Relatively than counting on abrupt adjustments, the plan outlines development from 83,700 in 2024 to 119,000 by 2034 and double the sector’s worth from NZ$3.6 billion to NZ$7.2 billion. The plan takes a phased strategy, tying development to high quality, sustainability and alignment with workforce wants.
Current reforms embrace rising in-study work limits from 20 to 25 hours per week, extending work rights to all tertiary alternate and examine overseas college students, and introducing a six-month post-study work visa for vocational graduates who don’t qualify for longer-term rights. The federal government can also be exploring simpler entry to multi-year visas. These measures intention to strengthen hyperlinks between examine, work expertise, and expert migration, whereas sustaining schooling high quality and managing neighborhood impacts.
The trail ahead is about tackling root causes via cautious, well-designed coverage that extends past surface-level fixes
The technique recognises the sector’s wider financial, social, cultural, and innovation-related worth, and requires nearer coordination between schooling suppliers, employers, and trade. It additionally seeks market diversification past China and India, with targets to boost New Zealand’s profile globally and transfer extra potential college students to rank it amongst their prime three selections.
It’s attention-grabbing to see New Zealand’s sector leaders pairing an formidable development goal with a deliberate, measured tempo. Their emphasis on balancing enrolment development with infrastructure, regional distribution and public assist provides vital classes for different nations together with Canada as we rethink our personal strategy to rebuilding and re-imagining worldwide schooling in a means that’s each sustainable and socially supported. Whereas too early to measure outcomes, Going for Progress exhibits how long-term targets, coordinated reforms and predictable coverage can construct stability, avoiding the uncertainty that comes with abrupt adjustments.
British Columbia’s Strategy
Nearer to dwelling, British Columbia has begun shifting towards a extra managed strategy to worldwide schooling one that provides helpful reference factors for different provinces to think about as they navigate comparable pressures. The framework is designed to handle key challenges: aligning enrolment with institutional and neighborhood capability, encouraging extra diversified scholar markets, connecting recruitment extra intently to housing and scholar helps, and strengthening high quality assurance to guard college students and institutional fame. Extra data on the province’s strategy could be present in its Public Post-Secondary International Student Enrolment Guidelines, Education Quality Assurance framework, and necessities for multi-year institutional international education strategies.
This strategy continues to be evolving, nevertheless it alerts a shift away from reactive measures towards extra deliberate, longer-term planning. The broader takeaway throughout all three instances – Germany’s coordinated nationwide funding, New Zealand’s managed development plan, and British Columbia’s rising provincial framework – shouldn’t be that any has discovered the right resolution, however that extra considerate, workable approaches are potential even inside a federal system like Canada’s. The trail ahead is much less about including new boundaries and complexity, and extra about tackling root causes via cautious, well-designed coverage that extends past surface-level fixes.
A path ahead for Canada
Canada requires a deliberate course correction, one that’s exact in its goals, strategic in its design and anchored in sturdy proof. This entails shifting past reactive decision-making towards a coherent framework that establishes clear long-term objectives, calibrates enrolment to institutional and neighborhood capability, and embeds worldwide schooling as a core pillar of nationwide financial, demographic and innovation methods.
Attaining this calls for sustained, structured coordination between federal, provincial and institutional companions, underpinned by transparency, dependable information and clearly outlined efficiency metrics.
As Canada seems to be forward, a number of key features ought to information the event of a stronger, extra sustainable worldwide schooling technique:
1. Transparency & accountability
- Prioritise transparency by publishing well timed, detailed information on examine allow allocations, approval charges and processing instances to allow evidence-based planning.
- Streamline compliance processes by redesigning the Provincial Attestation Letter course of to take away pointless steps whereas sustaining accountability and integrity.
- Recognise sector range by making use of insurance policies that replicate institutional variations in measurement, mission, and monitor report, utilizing a risk-based strategy to oversight.
2. Integration & coordination
- Combine coverage planning throughout schooling, immigration and labour market wants in order that worldwide college students are seen as future members of Canada’s workforce and communities.
- Set up a nationwide roundtable that brings collectively governments, establishments, employers and communities to coordinate expertise, expertise and immigration methods (as really useful by many teams throughout Canada CBIE, UniCan, CICan).
3. Pupil success & retention
- Put money into scholar success by funding housing, psychological well being companies, and educational helps that profit each home and worldwide learners, whereas creating clear residency pathways to encourage long-term retention.
- Undertake multi-year funding fashions for applications that hyperlink schooling with workforce integration, guaranteeing stability and continuity, just like Germany’s FIT program.
4. Narrative & public confidence
- Reset the narrative by speaking the shared advantages of worldwide schooling: sustaining educational applications, increasing alternatives, strengthening analysis capability and contributing to Canada’s innovation ecosystem.
- Construct public belief by exhibiting that investments in worldwide schooling aren’t a zero-sum trade-off with home priorities, however a shared funding in Canada’s prosperity, international competitiveness and neighborhood vitality.
Canada at a crossroads
Canada is at a crossroads. The previous 20 months have uncovered the price of reactive, fragmented coverage: instability for college kids, establishments and communities. The “constructing the airplane whereas flying it” strategy can’t proceed. That is additionally a second of alternative. Canada can create a clear, predictable and collaborative worldwide schooling system, one which recognises college students not as short-term guests, however as future residents in the event that they select to remain, or as international ambassadors for Canada: expert professionals, neighborhood builders and companions in strengthening our place on this planet.
Germany’s integration of upper schooling into its nationwide expert labour technique and New Zealand’s long-term managed development plan each display that it’s potential to stability integrity, financial profit and scholar success. British Columbia’s current steps present that proactive, well-planned coverage is feasible inside Canada’s governance construction, and that every province can develop its personal strategy tailor-made to its particular context, priorities and capability
In a quickly altering geopolitical setting, how Canada engages globally, attracts and retains expertise, and integrates schooling with long-term nationwide objectives will form its financial and social future. Canada can select to steer with imaginative and prescient and technique or watch as others safe the worldwide expertise, partnerships and affect that we now have allowed to slide away.
