MEDIA RELEASE:
RALLY FOR POST-SECONDARY EDUCATION
VANCOUVER ART GALLERY FRIDAY, APRIL 25TH , NOON
Faculty and students from Vancouver Community College and other lower mainland institutions will be rallying Friday to call upon the new federal government (led by either Liberals or Conservatives) to revisit its approach to International Students when they take on their new mandate next week.
MP Jenny Kwan (Vancouver East) and MLAs Sunita Dhir (Vancouver Langara) and Joan Phillip (Vancouver Strathcona) will be speaking at the Rally.
“They’ve in effect thrown the baby out with the bathwater,” said VCCFA President Frank Cosco. “There were problems because of a lack of controls on the numbers of student visas. But for over twenty years institutions have been clearly told by federal and provincial governments that taking on international students was the way to fund their colleges.”
“Now we are dealing with an overreaction as the numbers of visas have been cut drastically. The result is chaos as institutions have to slash and burn their budgets. If this was the auto industry, there’d be big headlines. BC Colleges as a whole are cutting hundreds of faculty jobs. It’s hurting international students, domestic students, industries, the colleges themselves.”
“We are in a crisis. A crisis that cries out for attention from both levels of government. The great, accessible post-secondary system we’ve had for decades is in danger of disappearing.”
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For more information contact:
Frank Cosco VCCFA President 604 838-9428 or Taryn Thomson V CCFA Vice-President 604-992-1464
Background:
The Ministry of Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship have drastically cut the numbers of visas for students who want to study in Canade. There were abuses and imbalances; however in BC the situation was not as bad as it had become in Ontario. Institutions had come to rely on the tuition from international students, and since government funding for education has been on the decline for the past thirty years, they actually had to rely on this tuition. Institutions needed some warning of such sweeping changes and they should have come over a longer time period. At Vancouver Community College (VCC), job losses from these changes will be in the hundreds of people. This is at a time when we are all facing economic instability due to our neighbours to the south. We ask that the new government examine the student visa policy with a view to setting a more rational transition so that the economic effects will be less severe on institutions, workers, families, and communities.
We actually have a great opportunity in Canada to welcome in appropriate numbers of international students as President Trump is doing his best to drive them away from the USA.
Publicly funded colleges are microcosms of the communities they are imbedded in. As well as providing education and services to students, colleges are significant community employers and economic drivers..
Institutions are being unnecessarily harmed by our own governments. Last week, Kwantlen Polytechnic University here in BC announced cuts of seventy faculty members. Our own institution, Vancouver Community College is facing similar cuts as are all the public colleges in the province.
There cannot be a massive reduction in international students without there being a ripple effect felt in the entire institution. Domestic offerings will drop also, and with them, services such as counselling and supports for Indigenous learners will be cut. Job losses will mean ripple effects in the communities we are situated in, and the loss of international students will have an impact both socially, and also on communities where international students contribute greatly as workers and community members. The effects of these changes will be severe, and they are already starting to happen. Canada’s “brand” as an international destination has been tarnished, but it can be restored with thoughtful, measured policy changes.
Vancouver Community College is located on the traditional unceded territories of the Coast Salish Peoples and acknowledges the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples who have been stewards of this land from time immemorial.