Claiming the school has fallen short of meeting their needs, roughly 300 international students enrolled at the College of New Caledonia packed a portion of the school’s gymnasium Tuesday for a town-hall style meeting.
With CNC president Henry Reisser and college administrators looking on, CNC Student Union president Harman Dandiwal took them through a presentation while others aired their grievances in the form of personal stories about the difficulties they have faced.
Complaints raised over the course of about two hours centred on problems getting the courses they wanted and a lack of advice and support.
In an interview Wednesday, Dandiwal said the trouble appeared to have started when the number of international students surged dramatically. For the 2016-17 school year, there were 925 international students at CNC, more than double the 390 attending in 2013-14.
Total student population, meanwhile, declined to 8,140 from 9,520 over that time.
Dandiwal completed a two-year program in business management – one of the programs he said is now “catching much of the heat” – after enrolling in January 2014.
He considers himself one of the lucky ones.
“There weren’t many international students on campus, so the support I had was a lot more,” he said. “It was the perfect time to graduate, I loved every bit of it.”
He said CNC failed at building enough capacity to accommodate the influx.
Chad Thompson, CNC’s acting vice president of academic services, disputed some of the claims raised, saying steps have been taken to deal with some of the issues while work is continuing to address others. For example, he said faculty has been added at a “very speedy rate” and noted faculty in business management have taken on additional work in the form of workshops to help students develop effective presentation skills and study habits.
But he also said the concerns raised were “motivated by a desire to maintain the educational quality of our programs” and added CNC is in the process of recruiting two more academic advisors to work with international students.
Anne Harris, CNC’s operations manager for the international education centre, said part of the problem is that in some cases students are granted visas just days before the start of the semester.
“And of course, that can provide major challenges both for the student in terms of trying to get here in a hurry and for the college in terms of trying to accommodate that student who may arrive and may not have the best selection of courses to get into,” Harris said.
Thompson said students’ concerns are being taken seriously.
“We really think that international students are a huge asset to CNC and to the Prince George community as a whole,” he said.
Dandiwal said the meeting left him hopeful students concerns will be addressed both over the short and long terms. He said the student union is also in the process of compiling written submissions from students which will also be handed over to administrators.
International students are advised to budget for $12,000 a year to cover tuition and fees for a full-time course load at CNC.
