Granting an ever-growing number of student visas to people we know will struggle to find housing is unethical at best and fraudulent at worst.
We need to dramatically cut the number of student visas, especially for private colleges, some of which are offering a quality of education that is less than desirable. We then need to tie student visas to housing availability – that is, a university shouldn’t be allowed to take on more international students than it can house in that community, for the duration of that person’s time studying in Canada.
Why is Canada trying to attract so many international students? Because it’s easier than properly funding post secondary institutions:
international students are cash cows. Tuition fees for domestic students are regulated by provincial governments. Not so for their international counterparts, which makes bringing in foreign learners incredibly lucrative for perpetually cash-strapped schools and universities. (The real growth is increasingly not just from universities, but also from private colleges.)
The housing crisis has a bunch of causes, from Airbnb, to shitty taxation policies, to NIMBYs, to regressive zoning. Tying student visas to available, reasonably priced housing would be a simple first step to reducing prices.
Being from Kitchener/waterloo I see there’s definetly a student housing issue and it affects the area badly. But also see the proposed solution as blunt and likley ineffective.
With 2 universities and a college that area has it pretty rough with housing. I had to move into my dad’s basement for a few years despite having a good job. I could afford a place but there was no where else to actually live.
Many homes close to the college apprently had 10 people living per room, you see places with like cars filling the parking lot and the lawns. The fire department whould demand evictions but that usually never takes.
The universities have a lot of huge condos and student housing near them but it seems every year we’d get news of one of the buildings not being done on time and hubdreds of student’s ending up having to live out of hotels. This also stresses the transit system and a lot of services. Then waterloo becomes a ghost town in the off seasons.
Of course for non students the cities become a mess of temporary rentals, and explotive landlords. There’s also the massive street parties that whould drain the police force budget.
Now in cases like this I’m not suggesting less student visas but schools need to coordinate with the cities to ensure there is enough housing in the area for the number of students they intend to intake. Though I’m not really sure how to make that fair as KW seemed to favour one school over the others. Keeping this coordination free if blatant corruption is going to take effort and require the setting of some standards potentially on a national level.
Fortunately, there’s been solutions other to this. Remote learning, when available, reduces the stains a lot and is becoming a popular option. It’s cheaper for rhe schools and the learners.
I also know schools have been decentalizing with campus spreading out across the city instead if just having one massive campus. Though this can make things more difficult for staff and learner, often needing a private transit setup. The benefit is that it spreads the housing needs a little and reduces strain on the public transit systems.
However, I still think the best option may be to limit the number of housing dependant students eatch school can take regardless of a visa.
I think that’s all anyone is suggesting. Certainly that’s what the op-ed mentions.
IMO a big part of post-secondary education is meeting other people and understanding their points of view. Remote learning makes that a lot harder. We should be letting international students in, but the schools need to ensure they have reasonable housing.
I’m sure one of the more self-righteous folk will dismissively tell you you’re merely parroting “talking points” shortly instead of actually reading your comment.