International students in Canada show increasing trends over the past decade

Many students from around the world get the opportunity to study abroad and have a variety of cultural experiences other than their own.

Canada is one of many host countries that welcome international students. According to statistics from Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), the number of students has increased from 70,000 in 2003 to 105,000 in 2012.

Students of King George International College in Vancouver, B.C.

There are plenty of factors that contribute to the rising rates of international students who would like to study in Canada, according to the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC).

Qualifications are valued around the world. Canada’s high academic standards and rigorous quality controls result in a high-quality education. A Canadian degree, diploma or certificate is globally recognized as being equivalent to those obtained from the United States or Commonwealth countries.

Canada offers affordable education. The quality of education and living standards in Canada are one of the highest in the world, but the cost of living and tuition fees for international students are generally lower than in other countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom.

Multiculturalism is everywhere. It should be easy to find activities or ethnic foods associated with a specific culture.

There are healthy and safe communities. The United Nations consistently ranks Canada as one of the best places to live. International students in Canada experience all of the same freedoms that protect Canadians: respect for human rights, equality, and a stable and peaceful society.

Canada has world-class language education. Since teaching French and English as a first and second language is an integral part of Canadian education, international students will be able to improve their fluency and capacity for either language. Canada is considered a world leader in language training.

Founder and head organizer of Canadian Friend, Stephanie Bourgeois, said several international students she has met decided to study in Canada because their friends or siblings have done it and highly recommended the experience.

Canadian Friend is a free-to-join group with a purpose to connect exchange, international and ESL students with local Canadians and native English speakers through different activities. Bourgeois’ work is done on a volunteer basis.

Though there are many reasons why Canada attracts a variety of international students, the one that contributes a big part is the immigration possibilities.

In 2008, there were changes made to immigration rules that has made Canada more attractive to foreign students. According to an online article by UniversityAffairs.ca, “the Canadian Experience Class (CEC) is allowing skilled foreign workers who have been working in Canada on a temporary basis and foreign graduates of Canadian postsecondary institutions with work experience to apply for permanent residency without leaving the country.”

In 2003, Korea was ranked number one for the number of students they sent to Canada. According to CIC statistics, the total number of students they sent was just under 14,000.

Jun-Heok Seok, an international student from Korea studying at King George International College, highlighted the importance of the need to learn English. “Koreans feel it’s very important to their development and will help them get a good job,” said Soek.

But in 2012, Korea is no longer ranked number one. According to CIC statistics, China has taken the top spot for sending over 25,000 students to Canada.

Experts have pointed out China’s growing economy, as the catalyst for middle class families sending their children overseas to study, according to StudyMagaze.com

A potential reason why Korea, as well as other countries’, rates of students being sent to Canada has decreased is because of visa waitlists.

According to an article posted by the Globe and Mail online, the rate of visa approvals has dropped by 15 per cent, and there has been a 5 per cent decline in requests for visas.

An ongoing strike by the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers (PAFSO) has caused a delay in processing visas of all types, including those required for international students landing at Canadian colleges and Universities.

There are also those international students who fear that they will not receive their visa in time. In response, most schools have given international students a grace period through which they will hold spaces and residence rooms. There are services offered that allow the latecomers to catch up with what they have missed.

For those who can’t make it soon enough, Canadian schools are recommending deferrals until next semester, or even next fall, and crossing their fingers the students don’t go elsewhere instead.

Luis Rodriguez, an international student from Mexico studying at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, thought the process was fast and convenient. He said those are the key factors when you are abroad and have to deal with all the paper work required for visas and permits within a time frame.

“To be an international student is a big challenge, but let me tell you, it’s worth it,” said Rodriguez.

My First Fusion Table Map

Here is my first awesome Fusion table map made in Chad's class


That was my map, right up there.

NICAR-L Summary

In the NICAR-L forum, Jessica Glazer added a post on January 14 regarding formatting dates before 1900 in Excel.

Glazer wanted to find the best way to uniformly format the dates she had in her data set.

There were a few suggestions that were given and further explained throughout this thread.

The most common excel tip that was given to Glazer was to use a text field and the yyyy-mm-dd format. This format is said to have the benefit of sorting correctly as text and it ends up being chronological.

I learned that because it’s delimited, it would be easy to do date arithmetic. The downfall from doing this is the loss of automatic validation of a date field. This means that the one who is looking through the data set must find mistakes such as “1799-02-31” on their own.

In this thread, Thomas Wilburn said this format is harder to filter.

To solve that problem, other columns could be used for filtering. Multiple columns can be sorted or filtered on a single column with predictable delimiters.

A delimiter is a character or a series of characters that indicate the beginning or end of a statement or body set. Examples of delimiters are round brackets: ( )

Here is the formula that Wilburn left for sorting multiple columns in Excel:
"=CONCATENATE(A1, "-", TEXT(B1, "00"), "-", TEXT(C1,"00"))"

I learned that separate columns could be sorted and filtered. With single text columns sorting is no problem, but filtering isn’t fun.

Even though filtering isn’t the most “fun” of all things, it should always be done and will be useful.

Wilburn said, “I feel like I’ve rarely regretted breaking something out into separate fields, but I have regretted not doing it.”

Edward Borasky added an insightful tip about Excel’s date algorithm. An Excel spreadsheet will display data for February 29, 1900. This is because Excel thinks 1900 was a leap year and will continuously think this for 1800 and 1700.

After reading through this thread, I learned that data journalists are willing to help and answer a variety of questions. They could reply within a couple days, a few hours, or seconds after the question was posted.

In this thread that Glazer posted, Tim Henderson and Thomas Wilburn were having a mini-conversation between themselves. They were commenting on each other’s comments and questioned each other’s suggestions.

With that said, Glazer was not the only one who learned tips on excel formatting, so did Henderson, Wilburn and everyone else who posted in the thread.

The data journalism community is a group of very knowledgeable people who are experts in their own specific fields and are more than willing to share that knowledge to help others from around the world. 

Data Access Updates

Update #1

My final data project will be looking at the amount of foreign students in Canada.

I want to analyze the data set and compare the number of foreign student entries from 2012 and 2013 and see if there was an increase or decrease of foreign students coming to Canada.

The data set that I found includes information such as:

• The country where the students are originally from
• Amount of foreign student entries during 2012 (which is broken down into quarter 1, 2, 3, 4, year-to-date, and total throughout the year)
• Amount of foreign student entries during 2013 (which is broken down into quarter 1, 2, and year to date)
• Total amount of foreign student entries during each quarter and year-to-date

 The following are questions I want to ask the data:

• In 2012, Which country had the most foreign students in Canada? The lowest?
• Do the top and lowest ranked countries for amount of foreign students in Canada have to do with their economy?
• What field of study are these students applying for?
• What consists of "other countries"? (the lowest ranked country could be in this category)

Since this data set doesn't have quarter 3 and 4 for 2013, I would like to somehow find an updated data set or find the missing data to allow myself to give a full and complete analysis.


Update #2

The question that I chose to identify that is not answered by the data set I have is: 

What consists of "other countries" ?

This is an important question to have answers to because the country with the least amount of foreign students in Canada could be found in the "other countries" record. 

The "other countries" record was most likely created because there were many countries that had a very low count of foreign students in Canada and summing them up was probably a way to have a cleaner-looking data spreadsheet. Maybe if the all the countries were included in the data set, then there would be many records with a count of zero.

The data set states that Cuba has the least amount of foreign student entries in Canada, but this analysis could easily change once I find out what the "other countries" are, along with the number of foreign students in relation to those countries. 

This data would probably be on an Excel spreadsheet that includes all the countries found on the data set I currently have, plus the "other countries".

The agency that I think would answer my question and have additional information would be Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC).


Update #3

I wanted to get in contact with Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) to get them to voluntarily provide the data I need.

The data I needed was: 
What consists of "other countries" ?

There was a phone number and email address provided on the CIC website, but it clearly stated that it was only to be used by the media. It said, " If you are seeking information about your case or general immigration information, please see our 'contact us' page."

On their "contact us" page, there is a search bar to easily search and access answers to questions, and phone numbers to specific CIC offices such as visa application centres, processing centres, and offices for appointments. 

I felt as though the data I needed couldn't be provided by these offices.

I decided to give that "for media only" phone number a call anyway. I said I am a journalism students looking for data regarding the total number of  foreign student entries in Canada by source of country in an excel spreadsheet format. 

Before I could go into further detail with what I was looking for, I was cut off and apologized to because they couldn't provided the data to a student. 

This made me wish I retracted my statement of being a journalism student. 

With that being a complete bust, I thought I would use the search bar on the "contact us" page and see what I could find. I typed in "Canada total foreign student entries."

On the third page, I found a link that surprisingly provided me with the data I was looking for. I now have a more detailed data set that I can work with, with more country records included.

There is still an "other countries" record with very small totals, but this is most likey due to privacy concerns.

These privacy concerns can be seen in cases such as this example:
If there is only one foreign student in Canada from Nauru, CIC may feel that listing that single student on a spreadsheet like that violates their privacy.

In my case, speaking directly with the agency didn't provide me with the data I needed, but curiously browsing through their website did.


Update #4

Stacy Ticne
Kwantlen Polytechnic University
12666 72nd Avenue
Surrey, B.C. V3W 2M8

March 22, 2014

Sarah Michaud
Access to Information and Privacy Coordinator
Access to Information and Privacy Division
Citizenship and Immigration Canada
Ottawa, Ontario  K1A 1L1

Dear Ms. Michaud

Under the Access to Information Act, please provide me with:

• A complete list of number of foreign students who entered Canada, by country of origin from 2003-2013.

If possible, please provide this list in electronic database format (ie. Excel, Access or CSV). I would like each country on a separate row with the relevant information on each country in adjoining columns, and the year as data fields.

If for some reason providing the actual student counts for each country could violate individual students' privacy, you can provide me with the percentages for each year instead.

Please do not provide me with PDF files.

I have enclosed a bulk cheque for $5 to cover the fee associated with my request.  

If you have any concerns, please email me at stacyticne@gmail.com

Please advise me when the material is available for release.

Sincerely,

Stacy Ticne

Data Story Analysis

An article posted by The Guardian on December 11, 2013 explains a criticism given by Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw: depending on the area where you live (England is being used in this story) heavily dictates the standard of education you will receive.

The story provided much data that was mostly made up of percentages. The story did a good job of explaining the data. It provided percentages of students who attended good or outstanding schools and also compared them to other areas.

It started to become unclear when multiple percentages and numbers were included in the same paragraph. When a lot of numbers are presented in such a close range of time, the numbers begin to sound unclear and may start to confuse the reader. 

To provide the story with more clarity, data percentages could be better spaced out  throughout the story and broken up in different paragraphs, allowing the mind to have a breather after absorbing the group of numbers just presented to them.

Another thing that could have been done to make the story a bit clearer is giving a little more background to the cities and regions that were described as having or not having outstanding schools in their area.

It's understood that this story is in a European newspaper, but it shouldn't be under the impression that only Europeans would be reading or be interested in these stories. Providing a bit more background (such as the level of wealth or poverty) with the cities and regions that were mentioned would make the story more clear to those who are not familiar with England.

The interactive graphic that was included was simple to use and was probably the most simple as it could be. There is a drop-down menu bar that allows the reader to select the type of school (nursery, primary, secondary,  etc.) and once one is selected, then the bar graph underneath will alter depending on the related data.

If a story like this were to be conducted in B.C., the agency that would have similar data would be the B.C. Ministry of Education. Some of the data they collect  include provincial exam marks, average mark in grade 10, 11, and 12 courses, and graduation rates. Government agencies allow the public to view raw data based on a variety of subjects for free. With that said, a journalist in B.C. should have no issues accessing this data.

Here's a wonderful and amazing map by the Great Chad Skelton.

Learn About Tableau

Wasn't that an awesome map?