WINNIPEG (CUP) — Immigrants new to Canada are highly educated and prefer ?real-world? disciplines like engineering and business administration. They also differ greatly from native-born Canadians in their approaches to post-secondary education.

Data pulled from the 2006 Census revealed that between 2001 and 2006, 700,000 immigrants came to Canada.

Their education levels are astounding. Approximately 51 per cent of immigrants aged 25 [to] 64 held a university degree, double the percentage of Canadian-born degree holders of the same age.

Overall, immigrant Canadians comprise half of Canada’s doctorate and master’s degree holders. Sixteen per cent of them earned their degree in a Canadian institution.

?Canada is twice the size as Brazil and one third on the population,? said Caroline Rosa, a 25-year-old Agriculture graduate student at the University of Manitoba. She began her immigration process earlier this year.

?There is a lot more competition back home . . . I wanted to take a higher degree that would allow me to work in places other than Brazil.?

At the University of Manitoba, 15 per cent of graduate students have international student status. Many of them are in the process of immigration.

Aaron Glenn, vice-president external for the University of Manitoba Graduate Students’ Association, believes that the numbers are also a factor of the immigration system.

?There is a preference for people who are more educated,? he said.

It is also the result of the highly rewarding graduate school system Canada has.

?In Brazil, I knew I was getting the same pay as a pharmacist as I would as a student here,? said Rosa.

Rosa came here in 2005, lured by graduate stipends, a familiar academic advisor, and the promise of opportunity. She applied for immigration earlier this year.

The differences between the Canadian-born and new immigrant populations continue past degree acquisition, however, and into their choice of disciplines.

Approximately one quarter of immigrants between 2001 and 2006 held a university degree in Engineering. Only six per cent of Canadian-born people between the age of 26 and 64 held the same degree.

Business, Management, Marketing and Related Support Services were second in line for immigrant participation.

Thirty-five per cent of the University of Manitoba’s international graduate students concentrated in the department of Engineering in 2006. It was second only to Agriculture, which contained 45 per cent of the non-citizen students.

In comparison, these students make up only 12 per cent of the university’s Arts faculty.

One reason for this is simple supply and demand.

According to the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers, the number of international students pursuing post-graduate engineering almost doubled between 2001 and 2005 to comprise nearly one third of all engineering graduate students in Canada.

?Engineers find more opportunities here than in India, they can go very far here,? said 28-year-old Chandra Singh, who is in his third year for a Biosystems Engineering PhD.

Singh said that India has a 200,000-person waiting list for enrolment in an engineering PhD program.

?It’s a very tough competition to get into a good engineering school [back home].?

In Canada, where only 20 per cent of the population holds a university degree, the options are much greater.

?In Brazil, I have to be the best to even get a job and get minimum wage,? said Rosa. ?Here, people do well without having a degree.?

?[Canadian-born citizens] wait to see what they’re really like,? she continued. ?[Back home], none of my friends went to work right after high-school.?

Immigrant and international students fill educational and economic voids that Canadians miss out on.

?There’s a demand for higher education (masters and PhD students) here, if you don’t recruit Canadians you go internationally,? said Singh.

Cultural differences play a great part in the post-secondary education choices of new Canadians.

?In certain countries there’s an emphasis to go to post-secondary education and go into engineering or medicine where you’ll make something of yourself,? said Glenn.

?Here, the parents don’t seem to be [as pushy].?

Rosa agrees.

?My parents really encouraged me to have a higher degree . . . Back home, you are not likely to have many chances if you don’t hold a degree.?

Students who switch to part-time status, or drop out altogether, quickly lose their eligibility to be a part of the national loan program, and immediately start accruing interest on their loans. Payments are then expected within six months.

When David Jacks was elected president of the University of Winnipeg Students’ Association, he still had another year left in his degree. The union’s bylaws mandated that he drop most of his classes while he held the office.

As soon as that happened, Jacks lost his student loan and began accumulating interest on what he had previously borrowed.

?Students who want to get involved on campus, It’s sacrificing a year of your academic life . . . and I certainly felt a financial penalty,? said Jacks.

?I will lose one year of my studies, and if I want to continue my studies, then the money I’ve made through this position is going directly to the student loan.?

CSLP has an interest relief line, which allows students to stop making payments on their loan, but to be eligible a students? family income is assessed and must fit the criteria established by CSLP.

Karen, whose last name is protected due to employment reasons, dropped out of school in 2006 after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
She was denied interest relief based on her and her husband’s projected income. She was making $1,400 a month through private insurance, which she said did not even cover living expenses and medicine.

?Financially, we were in the shit. Those $1,400 were all I had to live on.?

Jacks, who took time off for a paid position, was also ineligible.

?I can’t start a new line of credit [with Canada Student Loans],? he said. ?It is difficult to get the national and provincial bodies to recognize student activism and the student union.?

The scenario is no longer rare.

Between 10 and 40 people drop out of the University of Winnipeg every month, said Colin Russell, director of academic advising in the faculties of arts and science.

Financial difficulty is one of the most common reasons for the move, he said. ?A fair number of students will cite the money that they have isn’t sustainable and they have to work more,? Russell said.

?Some students will make the decision to continue with courses and maintain funding, even if It’s not to their benefit academically,? he added.
?They might have a lower GPA That’s not indicative of their ability, or if they had more money or time.?

Applying for interest relief or an additional loan upon returning to school doesn’t always work, either. Students are required to submit proof of enrolment in post-secondary studies, and to not have defaulted on any previous payments.

Many students have complained that paperwork gets lost, or the process takes too long and students are forced to find other ways to pay for their tuition while their files are being processed.

Karen’s medical forms were lost three times, she said.

After extensive complaints, the federal government placed the entire CSLP under review during 2007 and, in the 2008 budget, earmarked $123 million to Canada Student Loans Program reform.

Over half the funds, $74 million, are dedicated to improving the program’s responsiveness to borrowers? economic circumstances.

?There’s not enough support when you phone student loans,? said Karen. ?It’s not a service oriented, humanistic culture.?

?We’ve heard complaints from students about this scenario,? said Julian Benedict, co-founder of the Coalition for Student Loan Fairness.

The CSLF recently filed an Access to Information Request to CSLP to find out how many people are charged interest while still in school. They are currently awaiting results.

Many students are unaware of this complication until they go into collection, said Benedict.

While CSLP’s original borrowing conditions state what happens if students change to part-time status, these documents are a confusing collection of rules and exceptions.

?The rules are more of a challenge than they need to be for students,? said Benedict.

Hope is now high that the new government funding will be used to make CSLP more approachable and flexible. $23 million has been earmarked for an online service overhaul.

Benedict also suggested creating a national student loan ombudsman, a neutral third party to assist people with specific concerns. At the very least, he said, problems should be assigned to an individual who can handle the case.

Benedict also believes that part-time loans should be interest-free, and the interest-free grace period reinstated.

Interest relief should also not be decided based on projected income, said Karen, but case by case.

Overall, Benedict doubts that $123 million will fix the CSLP.

The final allocation will be brought to a vote in the House of Commons in the middle of March.

Monte Solberg, the minister responsible for CSLP, could not comment beyond the budget’s projection.

?Fundamentally, we have to look at climate change as a human rights issue,? said Rosa Kouri, communications coordinator for the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition who had just returned from Bali, where she was an official observer for the United Nations conference on climate change.

?The communities that will be most affected by it are the ones that have done the least to cause it . . . and have the least resources to deal with it.?

?Students have been at the vanguard of most social movements throughout most of history,? said Kouri. ?Now is the time to take it to the next level.?
The conference took place from Jan. 18 ? 20, hosting youth from Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

Delegates participated in sustainability and anti-oppression training sessions, shared experiences of campus sustainability efforts, and listened to keynote speeches on the relationship between climate change, social justice, and the Alberta tar sands.

?It is a forum to empower community members,? said Jeh Custer, Prairies coordinator for SYC. ?The conference is all about facilitating a discussion to educate folks and students about the sustainability challenges that we face . . . help students and campus community members understand how to be more effective activists.?

Custer agreed that students have a unique position in universities and colleges due to their influential role in the governing structure and the high availability of resources, brainpower, and potential recruits.

?We want to see students doing practical research That’s going to benefit our campus,? said Kate Dykman, coordinator for the University of Winnipeg’s SUNSET and a conference participant.

SUNSET (Sustainable University Now, Sustainable Earth Together), was awarded the region’s Most Successful Success in sustainability at the conference.

SUNSET also offers an Experiential Learning Program, a multifaceted academic stream that connects interested students with faculty to engage in sustainability research and practice.

?The university is a place for that innovation. We have the luxury of being able to follow our values and principles, do what’s right and not what’s profitable,? Dykman said.

?Campuses are a good testing ground for new ways of running things,? said Mike Hudema, a tar sands campaigner for Greenpeace Canada and a keynote speaker at the conference.

Custer also said that the largest barriers often standing in the way of campus sustainability are university and college administrations and government.

?I think some admins are more out of touch,? Custer said. ?[Universities] should be people’s institutions, democratic institutions.?

?It’s really immoral for a government like Canada and Canadian citizens to continue as business as usual while other people are losing their lives,? Kouri said.

Kouri believes that while motivated youth have a variety of ways to get involved with sustainability initiatives on campuses across the country, personal actions to reduce their own ecological footprint are also necessary.

?Not everyone can go to an international conference or march in Ottawa. Just getting involved at the campus level . . . You’re already a step ahead of the federal government,? she said.

Others argued that desperate times call for desperate measures.

?The Earth needs a voice, and sometimes we need to put our bodies on the line for that,? Hudema said.

The Sustainable Campuses Conferences are now in their ninth year, in both national and regional capacities, as part of the SYC’s Sustainable Campuses Project.

Despite their wide popularity, this was the first year the conference took place in the Prairies.

?The Prairies was a bit of a slower region . . . because it is so vast,? Custer said.

?Sometimes the Prairies are lagging behind and seem reluctant to adopt certain practices,? Dykman said.

Hudema was more critical of this slow progression.

?The Prairies should be one of the firsts?Alberta is one of the biggest industrious polluters in the world,? he said.

?Our population may not be so big, but I think you’ll be seeing one of the biggest activism efforts coming out of here,? Hudema said.

The win could spell big changes for post-secondary education.

The Saskatchewan Party ran on a platform of change, promising ?new ideas? for families, health-care and environmental issues.

The big debate for students was choosing between a tuition cut or rebate.

While the NDP promised to lower the province’s tuition by $1,000, add 10,000 new seats in the training sector and continue the newly-introduced Graduate Tax Exemption, voters were lured by the Saskatchewan Party’s flagship promise of a new post-graduation tuition rebate of up to $20,000 over seven years.

The party also committed to increase funding to post-secondary institutions by 28 per cent, create a $3 million-a-year Saskatchewan scholarship fund, and allow $10,000 annually in tax-free earnings for entrepreneurs and self-employed people under the age of 30.

The Saskatchewan Party also promised to promote business education in the province.

?Any increase is going to be a benefit to students and universities,? said Barbara Pollock, vice-president of external relations at the University of Regina. ?we’re certainly looking forward to talking to them on the key priorities we all have.?

?The government and the opposition have been very supportive of post-secondary education, and we’re looking forward to this continuing,? she said.

This platform’s policies were partially geared towards keeping Saskatchewan’s graduates in the province after they complete their education and was well-received by the province’s technological institutes.

?A lot of our students are looking to stay in the province, go in and start their own businesses in urban and rural Saskatchewan,? said Brittany Holderness, president of the Kelsey Students’ Association at the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology.

The party’s overall post-secondary platform, however, received mixed reviews.

A recent report card issued by the Canadian Federation of Students? Saskatchewan chapter gave it a mediocre C+.

While the scholarship fund and tuition rebate got high marks, they were overshadowed by failing grades for a lack of initiatives in student housing and improved access to education for aboriginal students.

?The province is well off, they have the money to do more than they promised,? said Mike Burton, CFS representative for Saskatchewan and president of the University of Regina students’ union.

?We believe [improving access for Aboriginal students] is a sacred obligation,? he continued.

Burton said that affordable student housing is crucial to improving Saskatchewan’s economy and accommodating the growing population.

?We need to avoid what happened in Alberta, where students and low-income earners were left with no options,? he said.

The province’s technological and trade institutes have special funding and space needs, which Holderness said were overlooked in the election platform.

?Our students don’t look at the here and now, they have different needs than university students,? Holderness said. ?Funding needs to come to technological institutions in different ways.?

Burton believes while ?trade schools wanted increased spots, and universities wanted lower tuition,? no one got everything as requested.

But Holderness said that election platforms need to be taken with a grain of salt.

?In all platforms, things are said but there is no money to back it up,? she said.

?It would be premature to know what funding we’re talking about,? said Pollock. ?We need to sit down and be able to talk to them first.?

CFS-SK said that its representatives will work with the new government and push for additional tuition reductions and need-based access grants.

The students’ unions of other technological colleges are expected to lobby for additional training spots, equipment upgrades, more budget-related autonomy from the government and long term budget commitments.

?In a province as small as ours, we get to know the government and the opposition on a personal basis,? said Holderness. ?We look forward to working with the new opposition and government to make the best education we can.?

At only 10 years old, the relatively new Saskatchewan Party was led by Brad Wall to win a majority government with 37 seats and 52.2 per cent of the popular vote.

The Lorne Calvert-led NDP pulled in the remaining 21 seats in the 58-seat legislative assembly, with 36.2 per cent of the popular vote.

At 9.3 and 2 per cent of the vote respectively, the Liberal and Green parties failed to win any seats.

Bonnie Schmidt, president of Let’s Talk Science, a national science literacy program, thinks that the federal government isn’t doing enough to promote young people’s involvement in the sciences.

?Our economy is moving into a knowledge-based economy that is going to require more people who are comfortable with science and engineering . . . and [the government is] going to be very hard pressed to attract that workforce.?

According to the latest Labour Force Survey, employment in the professional, scientific and technical services was the third fastest growing in the country, surpassed only by educational services and public administration.

Let’s Talk Science is one of several organizations across Canada hoping to increase the number of students and skilled professionals in the sciences and mathematics.

LTS, a charitable organization funded by donations and grants, offers programs and resources for children and adults.

The LTS partnership program has volunteer university students visit schools to share their experience in the field and engage the students with science- and mathematics-related activities. The program exists on 21 campuses, with over 14,000 volunteers.

There are also many regional programs.

?If we want to shift the culture, the drive for science and technology must permeate all walks of life,? Schmidt said.

Schmidt believes the importance of science is becoming clear at the upper echelons of Canadian politics. Grants for outreach programs have increased along with concerns about preparing a workforce for the future.

?There’s been a growing interest over the last 10 year within the scientist community to engage the public in scientific pursuit,? Schmidt said. ?Now, you’d be hard pressed to find a university that doesn’t have at least one outreach initiative.?

Educators are getting on board, trying to combat negative stereotypes about scientists and promoting awareness of career options. The perceived difficulty of the programs is also a drawback on recruitment efforts.

?I think we discourage people from sciences by requirements that might not be that important at an early stage,? said Robert Campbell, president of Mount Allison University in New Brunswick.

Schmidt agree, noting that getting students in the door is the first step.

?Science and technology often gets grouped into this great big area,? Schmidt said. While a growing number of jobs require a scientific background, students still believe being a scientist is the only option.

?Kids just don’t know where the jobs are,? she said.

Retention is also an issue to note. Once students have been attracted to the sciences, teaching them in a way that engages their imagination is key to their continuation in the program.

?The pedagogy of science is something we have to be looking at. There’s no point discouraging students at the beginning,? said Campbell. ?Some of the mass-oriented science departments lose students . . . It’s hard to learn if You’re learning in a lecture format.?

Campbell and Schmidt opt for more practical, ?issue-based? experience and a hands-on approach to science.

?You’ve got to create an environment where students are engaged in their own education,? explained Campbell. ?Research gets the kids re-involved in the magic of science and creativity.?

?To survive, you have to create opportunities for senior students to be useful in their work,? added Schmidt.

This approach, though, is not indicative of current trends, according [to] Leslie Cormack, dean of arts and social sciences at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Nor is the relatively higher number of humanities and social science graduates.

?These disciplines have constituted the lion’s share of the post-secondary system [for over 50 years],? she said.

Cormack added that the lower cost of running humanities programs ensured the flow of government grants, even during a recession.

Dale Kirby, however, an assistant professor of post-secondary studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland, believes that enrolment in the humanities over the sciences is motivated by demand demonstrated in the Labour Force Survey.

?We’ve got a growing services sector; it only makes sense that we have university graduates [in them],? Kirby said.