Just saw this article on the Telegraph Journal today

2007年9月25日18年前

[B]'We call them fake universities’
Change Alumnus says Chinese students will reject Saint John if school becomes polytechnic[/B]

link:
[url]http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/front/article/81120[/url]

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2007年9月25日18年前

楼主

[B]‘We call them fake universities’
Change Alumnus says Chinese students will reject Saint John if school becomes polytechnic[/B]

Closing the University of New Brunswick's Saint John campus to create an independent polytechnic may hurt the province's immigration efforts.

Chinese students at the Saint John campus do not want to attend a polytechnic institute that's not associated with UNB, alumnus Brandon Zhan says.

If the province moves forward with a controversial recommendation to scrap UNBSJ in favour of Saint John Polytechnic, the flow of hundreds of Chinese students to the Port City could stop, he said.

"In the culture where we are from, polytech, we call them fake universities," Zhan said."(In China) polytechs are schools that … only concentrate on making money and the quality of education is totally different than a university." Zhan said his experience at UNBSJ prompted him to stay in New Brunswick when he could have either gone out west to work or returned to China.

"I got so much from UNB. It was an opportunity for me to stay and at least do what I could to give something back." Zhan said he knows of many Chinese students and entire Chinese families who have immigrated to the province because of UNBSJ.

Greg Byrne, minister responsible for the province's population growth secretariat, said enticing international students to stay in New Brunswick will be a focus of the secretariat's upcoming population growth strategy.

The goal of the secretariat is to increase New Brunswick's immigration rate to 5,000 people per year by 2015.

Last year the province took in 1,700 immigrants from Korea, China, India and Iran.

"Certainly it's important to attract more international students to the province.

Obviously there are tremendous benefits to the economy if we can convince students to come here and stay here after graduation," Byrne said, adding that after four to six years, many international students develop an affinity for the province.

Byrne said the province is interested in the concerns of international studentsabout the recommendation to convert UNBSJ into a polytechnic.

He stressed that while the province has received the recommendations of the commission on post-secondary education, the government has yet to make any final decisions.

Zhan said concern over the future of UNBSJ prompted Chinese students to take to the streets with their Canadian and international counterparts in a protest last week.

Roughly 1,700 people attended the rally and demonstration in Saint John's uptown.

"Chinese students usually don't participate in any public events and then in the rally almost every single one went," said Zhan.

"They're worried. Say for myself for example, I graduated in 2006. After I go back to China in 10 years and people ask where did I graduate, what should I say? That my school is gone?" Of the roughly 700 international students at UNBSJ, 500 are Chinese.

International students account for nearly a third of UNBSJ's 3,000 full and parttime undergraduate students.

The Saint John campus has the highest ratio of international students to domestic students of any campus in the province.

Only its sister campus in Fredericton has a larger international student body, at roughly 760 students.

UNB Fredericton has a total undergraduate population of roughly 8,500 students.

Altogether St. Thomas University, Mount Allison University and all three campuses of the Université de Moncton have roughly 530 international undergraduate students.

Zhan said many of the Chinese students came to the Saint John campus of UNB because it accepted lower English as a second language (ESL) scores than the Fredericton campus.

UNBSJ is also home to an ESL school, Saint John College, which helps international students become proficient enough to succeed at the university level.

Chinese students at UNBSJ may leave rather than transfer to Fredericton in the event of the conversion of the Saint John campus to a polytechnic, he said.

"UNB without UNB Saint John is not UNB,"he said.

Dismantling the school would hurt the over 200-year reputation of UNB, he added.

Losing the university in Saint John would not only deter international students from coming to the Port City, it would also deter skilled workers with families from immigrating to Saint John, he said.

Such workers are needed for energy projects proposed for the Saint John area.

Zhan pointed out that many Chinese workers are immigrating to Canada to work in Alberta's oil patch.

"Without a university they will not settle down with their families in the city," he said. "Without a university…we're losing face to the world." Kathryn Hamer, vice-president of UNBSJ, said the commission's report has caused a flood of concerned inquires from international students and recruiters.

Any impacts from the report will likely be seen in next year's recruiting efforts, she said.

"We haven't quite managed to gauge the impact yet. It doesn't seem to have affected the intake this year, as long as those students stay." The university is preparing a response to its international recruitment agents that explains it is regulated by the provincial government and from time to time the province conducts a review.

"Right now we're considering this as business usual." Hamer said it would be a loss for not only UNBSJ but also the city if international students decided to either leave or not come to study in Saint John.

"They have brought to the campus and to the city a level of diversity I don't think we ever would have seen without them," she said.

The entire province has also benefited from the influx of international students, she said.

"Like most of the Maritimes,New Brunswick is a relatively homogenous region and these students have introduced new customs, new food, new languages, and new ways of doing things. All kinds of new that we wouldn't have met otherwise." Hamer said it would be a blow to Saint John if it were to lose its university campus.

"To have a university is a tremendous plus for any community and to make a decision to stop having one is a huge minus," she said.

"I think people realize that in Saint John.

There's tremendous pride that we have a university here."