Thread by @RE_MarketWatch

1/ Finally 🇨🇦 media is showing ghost colleges. ‘Where are all the students?’ I ask the affable Mr. Dhakecha, pressing him on why there is no one at all at the college’s Vaughan campus.
H/t @klausenhauser
theglobeandmail.com/politics/artic…

2/About three-quarters of the international students who are accepted and come to 🇨🇦 on a study permit do not attend any classes but apply immediately for their fees to be refunded. They then transfer to a public college where they would qualify for a postgraduate work permit

3/1,800 study permits were issued for the college by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) last year.

4/“To be honest with you, they are just using us to get here,” says Mr. Dhakecha. “Eventually everybody is going to public college. Thirty to 40 per cent stay here and sometimes they stay for one semester.”

5/He says he has applied to the Ontario government, which licenses the college, to close its Vaughan campus, where culinary courses were previously taught, because of a lack of international students.

6/The previous proprietor of Flair was another immigration consultant, Vishal Manocha, the new owner of A1-Global College of Health, Business & Technology in Mississauga.

7/The Globe spoke to Mr. Manocha, featured a photo of a grand neo-classical red-brick campus, with students carrying books on its grassy grounds. This bears little resemblance to A1-Global′s more modest premises next to a realty brokerage.

8/“We don’t give any letter of acceptance to somebody in India to get a visa to study at A1-Global College,” he says. “We are not giving any acceptance outside of Canada.”

9/Contrast the antiseptic silence of this ultra-modern college with the bustling Stanford International College of Business and Technology campus.

10/But the droves of students are not technically studying at Stanford College, a designated learning institution. They are instead registered at the affiliated Canadore College @Stanford, which offers postgraduate work permit-eligible programs.