Canada appears to be more and more of an appealing destination for South African students who wish to study overseas. This is, in part, due to the fact that local universities do not have the capacity to accommodate all of the country’s tertiary students.
Nicholas Avramis, Beaver Immigration, a travel agency company that assists SA student with the paperwork required to migrate to Canada, says that the opportunities offered to foreign students in the country make it an attractive option.
Canada offers a world-class education system, but what it does in order to retain talent and attract immigrants is allows students to stay in the country if they choose to, by providing them with a three-year open work permit once they graduate from their Canadian education. No other country really does this.
He adds that the reason Canada has one of the highest inflows of foreign students and grants them the opportunity to pursue a career in the country is that, much of the country’s skilled workforce, particularly in the IT field tends to migrate to the neighbouring United States of America.
So in order for the country to fill the gap within it's labour supply, they present foreign students with the opportunity to become a citizen after investing in their education system and assimilating into the population.
Canada also has more than 1500 types of universities and Colleges that offer over 10 000 programmes for students to choose from. The country also offers a wide variety of vocational training schools that are closely aligned with industry.
Information Technology, Finance and Engineering are among those that are the most in-demand in the country, since the country has a large variety of major industries and an ageing population.