Canada Capitalizes on a ‘Trump Bump’ — and Years of Preparation

Canada is having its moment.

With the two most popular destinations for international students, the United States and Britain, tarnished by rising isolationist and anti-foreigner sentiment, Canada, with its reputation for openness and safety, appears to be the main beneficiary. Universities across the country report record-setting applications from overseas, and international enrollments this fall are also expected to soar.

Mel Broitman has been advising Canadian institutions on recruiting abroad for two decades. For the first time, he says, students in places like Bangladesh and Dubai can name Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, the telegenic young politician who has been outspoken in his insistence that the country will remain welcoming.

“We have a brand that people know, a brand that people like, that’s attractive to young people. It’s a stunning juxtaposition with President Trump,” Mr. Broitman says. “This is the best-ever opportunity for Canada.”

But, Mr. Broitman and other observers say, if Canadian higher education is seizing this moment, that’s because it’s long prepared for it. As in the United States, Canadian universities have become more active in international recruiting, and the Canadian government, unlike its southern neighbor, has shifted national policy, in part, to attract students from abroad. International enrollments, in fact, have been on a steady rise, nearly doubling over the past decade, according to the Canadian Bureau for International Education, or CBIE.

“This is not,” says the group’s president, Karen McBride, “a sudden phenomenon.”

Indeed, the real challenge for Canadian institutions may be how to best capitalize on their position as an attractive alternative to studying in Mr. Trump’s America in a manageable and sustainable way.

An Also-Ran on the Rise

Historically, Canada has been something of an also-ran in global student mobility.

While the United States attracts about a quarter of all students who cross national borders to study, Canada’s share of international enrollments is only about 5 percent of the worldwide total, some 353,000 students. Not only the United States and Britain, but also China, France, Australia, and Russia, take in more foreign students, according to the Institute of International Education.

In 2011 the Canadian government assembled a commission on international education. Among its recommendations was to double overseas enrollments, to 450,000 by 2022, and to attract top-caliber students, particularly at the graduate level.

One reason for expanding international-student numbers will be familiar to American educators — the recent recession undercut public funding for universities, and foreign students were viewed as sources of tuition revenue.

But other motives are distinctly Canadian, says Amit Chakma, president of the University of Western Ontario, who led the panel. Canada is a vast country with a population spread across 10 provinces and three territories stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific and far north to the Arctic. Public sentiment supports local access to higher education, but there’s not always the population to justify a university. Even in Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, half of the institutions have struggled to meet enrollment targets, Mr. Chakma says. International students have been seen as a way to fill excess capacity.

Likewise, in recent years, Canada has actively sought to increase immigration, recognizing that it needs to attract foreigners to expand and sustain its economy. Much like the United States, Canada used to make it difficult for international students to stay on after graduation and work, but in a shift begun under a previous Conservative government, and accelerated under Mr. Trudeau, immigration policy now favors graduates of Canadian institutions.

Half of all international students in a 2015 CBIE survey said they planned to apply for permanent residency. And a third of the applicants to Canada’s skilled immigration system are graduates of local universities, says Laura Cooper, an economist with RBC Economics. Universities, she says, are a critical talent pipeline.

Prime Minister Trudeau has been emphasizing Canada’s open doors, especially in the wake of the Trump administration’s decision this year to bar travelers from a half-dozen predominantly Muslim countries and to step up vetting of all visitors to the United States. This month it was reported that the Department of Homeland Security is considering a measure that could increase scrutiny of international students in the United States.

Naveen Chopra runs a network of agencies in India that advise students interested in studying overseas. He says he has seen a “noticeable spike” in interest shifting from the United States to Canada since the travel ban, especially among prospective students who hope to work abroad, even temporarily, after graduation.

“Canada,” he says, “is becoming more on the radar.”

Un-Canadian Promotion

Canadian universities wasted little time after the travel ban was issued in promoting themselves as hospitable alternatives to students thinking twice about America. A number of institutions waived application fees or extended application deadlines for foreign students.

Even though the ban was quickly suspended by U.S. federal courts, Canadian universities reported signs of a so-called Trump bump.

Graduate applications from abroad to the University of Alberta jumped 82 percent, while at Concordia University, in Montreal, applications from Iran, one of the countries included in the travel ban, soared 317 percent.

The University of Toronto — where one in five undergraduates is from overseas — will admit 100 more students this fall than last from both India and the Middle East. Over all, international undergraduate applications jumped 21 percent at the top-ranked university.

But Edward Sargent, Toronto’s vice president for international, said that despite the outsize application numbers, the university was seeking to keep the ratio of international-to-domestic students stable. The increased interest, he says, will allow Toronto to diversify its international population and to be even more selective in the students it accepts.

At Alberta, Britta Baron, vice provost and associate vice president for international, says the university — which tries to maintain a student body with about 15 percent of the students from abroad — is likely to overshoot its international-enrollment goal for the fall. Surpassing that target one time is fine, Ms. Baron says, but even if international interest continues to surge, Alberta would probably check future international-enrollment growth.

“We’re a university of the province,” she says, “and we can’t have the perception that we’re admitting international students at the expense of provincial students.”

Ms. Baron says she also wants to be cautious about overrelying on foreign-student tuition. After all, what would happen if, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court, which is to hear arguments on the travel ban in the fall, were to strike down the policy? Would students reconsider and return to the United States?

Some international-education experts are skeptical that current interest in Canada represents a substantive realignment in international-enrollment trends. Yes, Canadian universities may be seeing an uptick in interest, says Creso Sá, director of the Centre for the Study of Canadian and International Education at the University of Toronto, but the shifts may be just at the margins.

“Being an international student is not like crossing the border to buy milk,” Mr. Sá says. “It takes a lot more effort and intentionality. Particularly at the graduate level, if you want to work in a specific, well-regarded lab, are you going to sacrifice that for politics?”

Still, given the far-larger size of the American higher-education system — with some 20 million students, compared with Canada’s 1.7 million — even if a small share of international students turned away from the United States, it could have an outsize impact.

Already, there are signs of growing interest. The Hotcourses Group, an international-student search firm has noted a substantial rise in student searches for Canadian universities on its websites from a variety of countries, including India, Brazil, and Vietnam.

Paul Davidson, president of Universities Canada, the country’s national university association, says that, in addition to Canada’s reputation as a welcoming place, its institutions offer a high-quality education at a comparatively low price, thanks to a weak Canadian dollar.

Canadian universities have a lot to offer, Mr. Davidson says, but they haven’t always been good — either individually or collectively — at promoting themselves abroad. Britain, for example, spends more on marketing its institutions in Delhi, India, than the Canadian government does worldwide.

“We clearly need to be bolder in advocating for Canadian higher education,” he says. “We’ve got to be very un-Canadian.”

Karin Fischer writes about international education, colleges and the economy, and other issues. She’s on Twitter @karinfischer, and her email address is karin.fischer@chronicle.com.