The Department of Immigration’s Integrity Risk Management Branch recently released a confidential report identifying the approved academic institutions, commonly referred to as Designated Learning Institutions (DLIs), which had the most no-shows, dropouts, and asylum requests. This list poses important questions about Canada’s rapidly burgeoning international education sector, which has seen schools in the country welcome hundreds of thousands of overseas students at tuition fees significantly higher than those for local students. According to the Canadian government, seven of the ten schools with a record high rate of non-compliance regarding international student attendance are located in Ontario and were private institutions. The other three universities are Laurentian University in Sudbury, Cape Breton University and University Sainte-Anne, located in Nova Scotia – all publicly funded institutions. These international students often applied for asylum rather than attending their registered courses as expected.
