So, I see that the Government of Canada is going to have-a-go at designating Canadian institutions for their suitability to accept foreign students, and deny entry visas to students who wish to study at non-designated institutions.  Having watched this process unfold in the student loans arena for the past twenty years, or so, I can only say, “good luck with that”.

Designation isn’t a new thing in Ottawa.  The HRDC spent the better part of a decade trying to get a designation framework together with the provinces regarding student loans.  This was a tedious process, which took a lot longer than it should have.  The delay was partly because the feds had some goofy ideas about how to go about solving the problem, and partly because a couple of provinces were seriously obstructionist (some, out of a sense of lingering irritation over the CHST cuts; others, because their politicians were reluctant to irritate private career college owners, who inevitably would be upset by such regulations).  There was never any doubt that some regulation was needed; everybody at the time could see that certain career colleges – especially in Ontario, Newfoundland, and Nova Scotia – were blowing a hole in government expenditure plans.  But the mere fact that the federal government was trying to insert itself into the issue of deciding which schools should, and which should not, be eligible for government programs sent everyone into a tizzy.

Here’s the thing: immigration is a federal responsibility, but education is a provincial one.  So who gets to make the rules?  It seems as though, this time out, the feds have had the good sense to leave designation to the provinces, but it’s not clear how well that will go.  From the sounds of things, it seems unlikely that many public institutions will be excluded – which means that what’s about to occur is ten separate provincial reviews of the career college industry.

But this could get awkward.  On what grounds, exactly, would a province deny private colleges a shot at international students?  It couldn’t possibly have to do with quality concerns; if it did, there’d have to be questions asked as to why, on the one hand, provincial governments won’t let foreigners pay their money to attend these schools, but, on the other hand, have no qualms whatsoever about allowing domestic students to take public student loans to go there.  And in any case, the lobbying around this issue promises to be intense; career colleges are already out lobbying intensively on this.

It’s far from certain, therefore, that the ten provinces will arrive at anything like a common approach on this issue.  And this will leave the feds in an interesting position: should they accept a patchwork of rules from the provinces, or start trying to regulate themselves?  There will no doubt be some temptation to do the latter, but it would set off an almighty fed-prov bun fight.

As I say, this should be interesting.