MBiz

30 MBiz | may 2016 FOREIGN EXCHANGE International education could be a growth industry By Wendy King M anitoba's education system is designed to provide a service — a public good. Gary Gervais, president of the Manitoba Council for International Education (MCIE), would assert that it is also an industry, one that exports Canadian education to other countries by hosting international students. "International education is an industry in the same way tourism would be an industry," says Gervais. "One thing we do really well in Canada is education, and people around the world look to us as a leader in education." MCIE was founded in 2000 as a means of sharing information among schools. Its mandate is "to collaboratively enhance and promote Manitoba's international education opportunities." "When international education in the province started growing, the people involved were mostly from high schools and post-secondary institutions," Gervais says. "So it came from people who were involved in marketing and recruiting international students needing to have a forum to get together and share ideas." He says international education has huge, unmet economic potential in Manitoba and Canada. "To give you a comparison, Australia, a big competitor that does a lot better than Canada in international education, sees a national economic impact of $19 billion per year and it is their fourth largest export industry," he says. "It's bigger than any other service industry including tourism." Canada does only about half of Australia's business, in the $10 billion range. But our population is about 50% larger, which means Australia is doing three times better than Canada on a per capita basis. Gervais says the field is highly competitive and countries in the U.K., and others like Australia and the U.S., which have federal oversight on education, have more organizations in place. "With education as a provincial responsibility here, we don't just compete globally, but with other Canadian destinations as well," he says. The MCIE works to do just that, ensuring that all its members, including K-12 schools, public and independent schools, universities and language schools, work together. No other province has an organization with as wide a scope. "It's a fairly complicated industry where we are dealing with things like visa issues — a federal responsibility — and education issues, which are a provincial issue, and we are in multiple markets, multiple countries," he says. Gervais says the actual number of international students in Manitoba is hard to pin down but numbers range from 4,000 at the University of Manitoba to two in Evergreen School Division. "The federal government tracks students coming in on study permits, so in 2014 the last statistics were 10,105 international students in Manitoba, but that number doesn't include any short-term students," he says. Still, Manitoba is not reaching its potential on a proportional basis. "In 2014, the federal government set a target to double the number of international students coming to Canada by 2022 to 450,000, so our proportionate share would be over 16,000 students," he says. Currently, federal government research estimates about $32,000 per student comes into the country. That translates into about $32 million per year for Manitoba, which makes it a significant industry, Gervais says. International education also dramatically lowers the cost of immigration if that student chooses to remain in Canada. "When you look at someone coming into the province to do a degree and then they immigrate, there is a big cost advantage because the province doesn't have to provide language training, and they hit the ground running because they have a network here," he says. "And there are a lot of benefits on the tourism side if they are here long-term because family or friends will visit." Gervais says welcoming international students into Manitoba schools is good for everyone, and research shows that domestic students benefit from having an internationalized campus. "Overall, there are benefits in terms of the classroom dynamic and what students are going to learn about another country from someone who comes from there," he says. "It's a real win-win in terms of what it provides, whether students study here and then immigrate or study here and return home." ■ MANITOBA COUNCIL FOR INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION

• Cover