Canadian Journal of Higher Education

Emerging Issues in the Internationalization of Canadian Higher Education

Emma Sabzalieva — 2021-02-17

Introduction to the special issue.

International education policymaking: A case study of Ontario’s Trillium Scholarship Program

Amira El Masri — 2020-12-08

This paper explores Ontario’s international education policy landscape through illuminating the discursive struggles to define international student funding policies, in particular the international doctoral students’ Trillium Scholarship. Adopting Hajer’s (1993, 2006) Discourse Coalition Framework, the study engages with three research questions: What paved the way to this funding policy? Who were the actors engaged in this policy landscape? How has the argumentation over this policy influenced the international education policy context in Ontario? Argumentative discourse analysis was used to analyze three data sources: news articles, policy documents, and interviews. Two storylines were identified: international student funding is desirable and beneficial to Ontario versus Ontario first. Whereas the first storyline achieved hegemony, the second succeeded in bringing discourses of protectionism to the forefront influencing the government’s future engagement with international student funding. The paper ends with three observations on Ontario’s international education policy landscape. This study contributes to our understanding of how international student funding can be highly political and influenced by non-education policy spaces and discourses.

Strategic Benefits, Symbolic Commitments: How Canadian Colleges and Universities Frame Internationalization

Elizabeth Buckner — 2020-12-08

This article examines how Canadian colleges and universities formally articulate their priority activities for internationalization, and what discursive rationales justify their approaches. Data come from 32 publicly-available internationalization strategies published in English by Canadian colleges and universities. In terms of practices, we find that institutions are adopting a largely similar set of activities, focused on partnerships and student and scholarly mobility. In terms of their justifications, we find that most institutions combine the strategic benefits of revenue generation and reputational prestige with symbolic commitments to diversity and excellence. We argue that by drawing on multiple rationales, internationalization strategies imbue the same generic activities with many meanings, which helps the internationalization project garner acceptance from an institution’s diverse stakeholders. In concluding, we also point to a number of noticeably absent ideas, including equity, empathy, humility, and civic responsibility

Border Imperialism and Exclusion in Canadian Parliamentary Talk about International Students

Dale M. McCartney — 2020-12-08

Although there is a rich critical literature examining international student policy in Canada, very little of it considers the views of Members of Parliament. MPs have limited direct influence over international student policy, but their policy talk about international students defines the context within which such policy is developed. For that reason Parliamentary debate deserves study. This paper examines MPs’ discussion of international students between 1984 and 2019, tracing themes in MP policy talk over the globalization era. It finds that MPs evince remarkably consistent attitudes towards international students. Throughout the period MP policy talk shows that Parliamentarians saw international students as outsiders who were only of
value to the extent that they could be made to serve Canada’s economic or political agenda. The uniformity of this attitude and the lack of dissenting voices suggest that MPs’ views may be a significant barrier to reforming international student policy in Canada.

Mental Health Status and Help-Seeking Strategies of Canadian International Students

Danielle de Moissac — 2020-12-08

International students are at heightened risk of developing psychological distress, yet little research has been conducted on their mental health or support needs. This quantitative study focused on undergraduate students at two mid-sized universities in Manitoba, Canada. Online and paper surveys were completed by 932 participants, of whom 21% identified as international students. This paper, descriptive in nature, outlines the sociodemographic profiles, current mental health status, psychological characteristics, and coping strategies of international students compared to domestic students in each institution. Data show that international students are more likely to report excellent mental health, score higher on the mental health scale, and report higher life satisfaction, higher self-esteem, and more positive body image than domestic respondents. However, they are less likely to talk about their hardships. Providing culturally-adapted supports that take into consideration ethnolinguistic differences, religious practice, and mental health literacy will better meet the needs of international students on campus.

Building Bridges to Better Bonds?: Differential On-Campus Participation between International and Domestic Students

Nicole Malette — 2020-12-08

Helping international students create meaningful on-campus connections is a major part of higher education’s internationalization efforts. By focusing on the efforts made by both international and domestic students to develop a sense of belonging through on-campus organizations like clubs and sports, we have the opportunity to consider their active creation of bridging and bonding capital. Through structured interviews with 150 international Asian and domestic White and Asian students enrolled at one of the largest universities in Canada, this research demonstrates that ethnicity-based on-campus organizations play a key role in helping international students build bonding capital on campus. However, findings from this research also demonstrate that international and domestic student groups do not take part in the same on-campus organizations. Differences in participation and discriminatory attitudes held by domestic White students have the potential to inhibit bridging capital, limiting integration between student groups

Brazilian Federal Institutes and Canadian Colleges: Sharing Experiences Internationally

Claudia Schiedeck Soares de Souza — 2021-02-17

The Brazilian Federal Network of VET Institutes was created in 2008 to address the demand for Higher Education’s rapid growth. Since the establishment of Science Without Borders in 2011, the Federal Institutes have been developing international strategies for strengthening their internationalization process. However, there has been little research about the theme in Brazil. This article highlights the cooperation between Canada and Brazil that enhanced the Federal Institutes’ internationalization process. The findings presented in this article are part of the research results on the Brazilian Federal Institutes’ internationalization model, which used Situational Analysis as a methodological tool and pointed to the A Thousand Women project as the first significant international experience in these institutions. The data analyzed supports the claim that Canada became a significant reference for the Brazilian Federal Institutes and helped them build their internationalization process concretely and collaboratively.

Discursive Power and the Internationalization of Universities in British Columbia and Ontario

Conrad King — 2021-02-17

Universities rationalize internationalization according to paradigms that emerge from different contexts. With the advent of internationalization strategies by federal and provincial governments, what effect do government ideas have on Canadian universities? This article evaluates the discursive power of government, and its role in discourse communities pertaining to higher education internationalization. Employing a discursive institutionalist framework and qualitative research design, I evaluated discursive content at 16 Tier 1 and 2 universities in British Columbia and Ontario. The findings indicate that governments have had weak ideational influence over the past decade, especially at universities with a global or national
orientation. Many of these universities have been undergoing a subtle shift in their internationalization rationales—although not all, and not at the same pace. Yet some Canadian universities have increasingly “looked within” to rationalize internationalization, because their discourse communities are dominated by internal voices more concerned with organizational context than global competitiveness.