More and more people are coming from around the world to study at the University of the Fraser Valley.
The number of international students has risen steadily in recent years to approximately 1,200 – 14 per cent of the student body. That’s a 20 per cent jump over just two years ago, according to David McGuire, UFV’s executive director of international.
International students at UFV pay approximately $17,000 per year in tuition, roughly three times more than domestic students.
The school has made a concerted effort in recent years to attract more foreign students and address “Canada’s global-engagement challenge,” McGuire said.
He said international students who come to UFV provide a window to their countries and cultures less accessible to Canadians due to its geography and cost of travel. The school also offers a variety of study-abroad programs that he said allow Canadian students to learn and travel without breaking the bank.
The most common countries of origin for UFV’s foreign students are India, China, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, the U.K. and the U.S.
McGuire said UFV has not seen the same recent surge in American students coming to UFV as other Canadian universities, which some have blamed on the current political climate in that country.
“I think that that’s something that a lot of the big research-intensive universities have probably seen but not for us, even though we’re relatively close to the U.S. border,” he said.
@KelvinGawley
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