Quote:
Originally Posted by lio45
This should be done on a case-by-case basis though. Canadian professional orders will never accept (and they're right) that anyone can just show up with a bogus diploma obtained in some banana republic and immediately be their professional equal on paper.
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The diploma mills exist in Canada too. International students pay a lot of money to go to school here and the reality is that the more money you have the more flexible standards are. I've seen students in third year classes at major universities who can barely speak English. It's easy to transfer credits into the major schools from sketchy colleges. If you have lots of money and mediocre ability you can get credentials that look pretty good.
The other reality of post-secondary education is that much of its value comes from signalling, not just the skills that students learn. I don't think it's true to any significant degree that business and arts graduates generate economic growth beyond what would have existed had they not gotten their degrees.
A corollary to these facts is that there's not much gain to be had for Canada giving PR to this crowd unless we feel we have a shortage of labour, which seems pretty dubious given how real wages have been stagnant or in decline in Canada for decades (and the fact that all our wealth supposedly comes from shipping oil through pipelines; why would we want to divide that up amongst more people?). I predict that if we let in a ton of international students we'd just get a country where menial jobs require master's degrees, not a huge increase in economic activity per capita. We are already far down that path.