The Province of BC Wants More Foreign Students

Re-post from The Vancouver Sun:

The Province of BC is designing a new international student education strategy.  The goal is to increase the number of international students attending school in BC to increase the number of jobs in the market as well as to capture money spent by internationals during their stay in BC.

“Today, I’m announcing that the province is setting an aggressive target to grow our international student population in B.C. by 50 per cent in just the next four years,” Clark announced during a speech in Kamloops. “If we can meet those targets we can put 9,000 people to work and put another $500 million into our economy.”

Currently there are about 94,000 international students in British Columbia, and that in 2010 those students collectively spent about $1.8 billion in the province.  That translates into approximately $20,000 spent by each student.  Clarke’s goal of 9000 students puts an additional $180 million dollars into BC economy.