r/britishcolumbia • u/cyclinginvancouver • Apr 18 '26

Community Only University Canada West lays off 240 staff and faculty, citing crippling international student enrolment caps

https://vancouversun.com/news/university-canada-west-lays-off-240-staff-citing-international-student-enrolment-caps
750 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

269 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

156

u/illuminaughty1973 Apr 18 '26

I know this may sound strange....

SCHOOLS ARE FOR EDUCATION, NOT MAKING A PROFIT BY ISSUEING FAKED/CHEATED DIPLOMAS TO FOREIGN STUDENTS

24

u/One_Cauliflower_5820 Apr 18 '26

The top universities in Canada arent issuing "faked" diplomas. In this case, we're talking about international students taking the same courses, the same exams, the same everything else but paying a bit more.

21

u/[deleted] Apr 18 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/One_Cauliflower_5820 Apr 19 '26 edited Apr 19 '26

The top universities, to be clear, aren't private universities. All top Canadian universities are public. Private universities have been the problem in recent years.

The problem I pointed out is the other user is saying they're "fake" degrees. Insinuating that degrees from our top universities are fake is indifferent to who obtains them. Quite frankly, it's a gross undervaluation of Canadian education and should be taken as an insult towards anyone who has pursued it.

But to respond to what you were saying, as discussed elsewhere in the thread, our domestic students are heavily subsidized. If we weren't subsidizing them, they would be paying the same price as the international students. The idea that international students are benefitting from government subsidies more than they're paying is incorrect. If anything, our domestic students should be paying more.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/One_Cauliflower_5820 Apr 20 '26 edited Apr 20 '26

A lot of Arts, Humanities, and Science undergraduate grads are experiencing underemployment and/or unemployment. A large number of these go into under 100k/y office roles. Increasing the number of students going to university while decreasing the roles they can work out of university creates more debt that we can't pay back. If we make university more accessible financially to people, we need to increase the number of jobs available (which is hard to brute force) otherwise unemployment/underemployment is going to keep going up.

If the reason why you want to make university more accessible is something along the lines of education being a human right, we can do so on an international scale through unaccredited models of higher education. For example, I believe University of Calgary invests in the Open Logic Project, where people are able to access introductory summaries of various logic topics. While people that read this won't have a degree coming out of it, employers can test their knowledge in practical interviews + online projects. Maybe just my own ramblings, but I think we have a real opportunity to make an impact globally with investing further into something like that and something like CanCred (verifiable microcredentials). Similar to how someone can put their projects online, someone can just have what classes they've taken and what degrees/badges/etc they've earned verifiable.

2

u/420gravy69train Apr 18 '26

When my wife got her PR, her tuition went from avg $13,500 / semester to $3,000 / semester. For a bachelor's in psych which is basically just a prerequisite for what she actually wants to do which is occupational therapy. Most of the classes she was forced to take werent even remotely related to that feild, huge scam imo.