Originally published on April 13, 2023
On March 2nd, CBC Radio reported on misleading tactics used by some private colleges in British Columbia to shortchange international students.
When an Indian student at Granville College, a private post-secondary, realized that the school was cheating on instruction time and quality, she requested a tuition refund from the school. The school, however, initially did not respond to her numerous contacts and, when they eventually got back to her, the school tried to lie to her about the amount that the school owes her. Another Indian student at Vancouver Career College, another private institution, requested refund after the instructor started to regularly end early and cancel classes. Similarly, when the school eventually responded to the student’s numerous attempts, they demanded that she pay the remainder of her tuition, arguing that she had taken more than 30% of the course, which, according to the enrollment agreement, requires 100% of the tuition. This calculation, however, was based on scheduled instruction time, rather than actual instruction time.
Both students reached out to One Voice Canada, a non-profit that helps vulnerable international students, who then had to file a claim with B.C.’s Private Training Institutions Branch (PTIB), a part of the Ministry of Advanced Education that ensures that institutions act legally. Some colleges, however, would go as far as threatening the student’s immigration status. After the non-profit reached out to Granville College, the college threatened to report the student to immigration authorities. Meanwhile, the immigration consultant in India, who told the student that she could only enroll in Granville College, but not public institutions like Vancouver Community College, threatened her family in India. After the student and the non-profit filed a complaint with PTIB, the immigration consultant offered the family $10,000 in return for their withdrawal of the complaint.
Then, on March 17th, another CBC news article reported on dozens of Indian international students that are facing deportation because of forged immigration documents allegedly provided by their immigration agent back home. The federal government only notified the students of their fraudulent documents and impending deportation when the student applied for post graduate work permits. In many cases, the students had already paid high international students fees and, by the time of their graduation, their family, who mostly had to sell homes and mortgage family land, are hoping that they would begin sending money home. Numerous reports on similar cases were posted in March.
Often times, the immigration agent would enroll students in institutions that the students had never heard of or in classes the students weren’t interested in. In some cases, the immigration agent would change the student’s college without prior consultation after the student had already landed, claiming that the college they had initially applied for is full.
Initial Analysis
The agents’ efforts to direct the students to a specific institution and the threats demonstrates that the college and the consultant are most likely working together. The consultant’s decision to offer the student’s family a settlement only after they filed a PTIB complaint suggests that the college and the consultant are just two ends of the same operation, perhaps even the same company. Without direct and shared interests, it is unlikely that the consultant would offer a settlement of $10,000 in the benefit of the college. So, then, there is a mature market and supply chain based on deceiving international students.
Furthermore, not only are all students in these reports of Indian origins, but the non-profit organization, One Voice Canada, is also founded and ran by Indians. This suggests that the complete supply chain is founded upon Indian international students. More specifically, their threats on the students’ immigration status and most of the student families’ financial status show that they target the students of poor Indian families who are desperate to obtain immigration status in Canada.
Granville College, for example, is operating under Opulence Education Group, who, on their home page, claims to have “significant presence in Canada and India.” All eleven of their colleges, however, are located only in Australia and Canada; perhaps their significant presence in India is of a different nature. Though Vancouver Career College does not have a similar Indian background, their parent company, Eminata Group, has a history of deceitful business practices in both California and British Columbia. Among all PTIB’s 26 enforcement actions, 10 were distributed to three institutions owned by Eminata Group. More generally, however, international students are a massive market. On average, they pay a tuition that is three to four times that of domestic students. In 2017, Langara College allocated CAD$1.672 million for international recruitment agent fees, while Douglas paid CAD$1.1 million for its international agents in 2015. Of Langara’s international students, 60% were referred by recruitment agents.
So, there is a mature market and supply chain that exploits lower class Indian international students looking to immigrate to Canada. There are a few patterns within this: first, there must be a lot of Indian students seeking post-secondary studies in Canada; second, they have similar financial background; third, there are institutional and systematic realities that allow deceitful agents to profit upon this demographic. But what explains these realities?
Further Analysis
The large Indian population in Canada provides the first part of the explanation. Not only is 10% of the 8.36 million immigrants residing in Canada of Indian origin, but that number is increasing dramatically. Indian immigration to Canada has tripled since 2013 and, in 2022, 27% of new Canadian immigrants came from India, while China, the second place, supplied 7%. This is not merely a Canadian phenomenon. In 1990, there were less than seven million Indian diaspora and today there are over 18 million — most of which resides in the US, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.
In regard to immigration to Canada, a popular immigration pathway is first obtaining a study permit, then a work permit. Establishing an education and work history creates an advantage in an immigration application, thus statistics similar to the global increase of Indian emigrants can be found in the issuance of study permits. In 2015, there were 219,035 study permit holders in Canada, of which 30% came from China and only 14.6% came from India. In 2022, there were 550,505 study permit holders, only 9.4% came from China and 41.1% came from India. The main reason behind this trend is the rise of India’s income level. Since the late 1980s, India’s GDP per capita growth rate has generally been 3%-3.5% higher than the average growth rate of the world. The number of middle income households has risen twentyfold between 1990 and 2015 in India. It is the sheer size of families and sheer amount of money available that bred these scams.
It seems like, then, that these news reports actually reflect the rise of India’s middle class and the increasing number of international students. China, however, is also a large source of international students and home to the largest middle class in the world. Why, then, are there no mentions of Chinese students or on similar scams in China in these reports?
Until recent years, China had indeed supply most of the international students in Canada for decades. However, there has been a rapid decline of Chinese international students in Canada, because of the political tensions between China and some Western countries, such as Canada and the US, and the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years. As the global number of international students from China increased from 800,000 in 2015 to 1.1 million in 2020, Chinese students turned away from Canada. The number of study permit applications submitted from China was 20% the number of applications from India in 2019, then 16% in 2020, and 14% in 2021. Meanwhile, UK study permits issued to Chinese students increased 13.3% between 2019 and 2021.
Apart from a declining presence in Canada, Chinese international students also differ greatly from their Indian counterpart in financial resources. Though 30% of Indians in 2022 belong in the middle class, over 50% of China’s population had already entered the middle class in 2018. A study on Indian international students revealed that 67% of students are from farming families and 54% of the students’ families will sell property or take a loan to fund their education. Even if we assume India’s middle-class families to supply the majority of international students, that will put the annual income of most families within the US$610 to US$3660 range. Meanwhile, a report on Chinese international students reveals that half of the students’ families earn between US$16004 to US$59198 a year.
This financial difference has a few implications. First, while 73% of students from India were studying at a Canadian college, 83% of students from China were studying at a Canadian university. This is likely because universities have a more rigorous admission process, which the wealthier Chinese students are more likely to have an advantage in. Furthermore, private colleges generally require less time to complete and have a more direct path into employment. This is more appealing to the poorer Indian families, who are expecting their children to send remittances back home.
Second, lower GDP per capita not only means that people have less resources, such as access to lawyers, to protect their legal rights, but it also means that there is less tax funding to facilitate regulatory and governance bodies. The threats on the student’s family back in India, for example, demonstrates that the breach of a business agreement is regulated not by commerce bureaus and the legal system, but by threats and financial incentives of fraud organizations. This is a blatant threat on social order that is only effective in societies where regulatory bodies are unable to extend their authority to the entirety of the society. India’s crime rate reflects this reality. In 2023, India has the 71st highest crime rate, while China ranks 108th and Singapore ranks 113th. This explains why the institutions of India has ultimately failed to prevent fraud on international students.
Conclusion
Though these reports are only about the individual experiences of some Indian international students, they reflect larger societal trends. Firstly, the expansion of India’s middle class in the past decades allowed many families to consider education aboard. Secondly, the limited wealth of the average Indian family means that, internationally, they seek diploma-based and career focused colleges and, domestically, both the victim families and the government lack financial resources to combat such crimes.
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