Discussion of the Brand: Imagine au/in Canada

DISCUSSION OF THE BRAND: IMAGINE EDUCATION AU/IN CANADA

(PART TWO OF PREVIOUS DISCUSSION)

Well I think London and England have progressed and embraced international education almost at the time that the Americans enforced IMF requirements that they abandon their colonies and transfer their wealth to the US financial system after World War Two. There may be more than a few educational institutional leaders in Canada that are not just inflating administrative costs but ensuring their pension packages will be secure; above and beyond national concerns over domestic enrollment growth estimates and international enrollment issues highlighted in their quickly assembled internationalization strategy.

What comes to mind: Mount Saint Vincent Mother-house.

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE: CLOSE-MINDED THINKING

Rubber stamping a national strategy based on two reports and a consultation process with fewer than one hundred and fifty stakeholders; one report of which I've already discussed, the other known to reveal that for decades few provinces have kept any solid research data on their international students. Maybe Canadian inter-provincial barriers to trade and labour mobility have kept our sense of national culture in the internationalization of the Cold War? These provinces haven't cared enough about their international students to keep records or research data on them for decades and suddenly as a result they have a fully formed national strategy in under three years? 

LOCAL ACADEMICS: FROM THE HORSES' MOUTH 

I see established resistance to the international student growth plans espoused by national level councils and government among academics at Acadia sure; I was at the recent Forum for Building a New Economy in Nova Scotia a couple of weeks ago. Their attitudes were crystal, " no exponential growth" and, "there are other means to measure quality of life than GDP." 

SILENCE ON THE THIRD SCENARIO

It's clear few of these academics have done the math on what 30% population declines in Atlantic Canada are going to look like in as little as ten years. Maybe that's where they're getting their projected 5% domestic enrollment increases across the nation annually but most probably by poaching rural schools students. 

Great example, Saint Mary's admissions set up at The Old O last week with promises of automatic enrollment and waiving enrollment fees. That looks like poaching to me and the waiving of due processes in registration. 

OUTDATED NATIONAL VALUES ON HIGHER EDUCATION

I see academics across Canada reinforcing an outdated philosophy of the purposes of higher education especially in their resistance to collaboratively building offshore campuses in Asia and MENA as a national lack of trend. There are a few maverick schools already abroad and I commend them. But their competitors in Oz are already at 40% of their schools operating profit centres abroad. 

BEING LOCKED OUT OF WORK OR RESEARCH IN CANADA

I see a resistance repatriating my own modest but earned knowledge from abroad in numerous PhD programs of study and teaching inquiries in my discipline across the country over the past year of applications here. Nine times out of ten not even a response in decline let alone an acknowledgement of receipt of application. I even see it in the left leaning, "Canada Imagine Education au/in Canada logo." That's a great example of an academic enterprise that seeks to meet its own needs for compromise and market to itself rather than to its future international students. 

They even trade marked that logo. Who would steal au/in? Note: It is presented here to display how mediocre it really is not in an effort to align with it. Need I say how symbolic it is that the Maple Leaf doesn't even have eleven points on it? Gives a sense that this national strategy was written with crayola crayons.