The capitalist imperative of prioritizing profits over the protection of human life, on top of record-setting inflation, and years of savage austerity and privatization for health care, education and other public services have taken a terrible toll on the living conditions, physical wellbeing and mental health of workers and young people.
In addition to hospitalizations and deaths associated with COVID-19 and the debilitating symptoms of Long COVID, there are alarming signs of increased mental illness in the population, especially among young people.
A study of 1,000 international students in Canada from 84 countries conducted by researchers at Carlton University and published on The Conversation found that 55 percent of respondents were at risk of depression and about 50 percent were at risk of an anxiety disorder.
Difficulties accessing community and campus supports, online educational resources, culture shock, language barriers and being great distances from family and familiar surroundings, often in conditions of isolation, were cited by respondents as the main problems they faced. Many students said they suffered from loneliness, mental exhaustion, panic attacks and social isolation. International students found it hard to reach school counselling centres, with attempts to make appointments failing due to the high volume of students seeking these services.
The survey found that academic and financial stresses were among the greatest challenges students faced. Many students said they had difficulty adjusting to online instruction. At the start of the pandemic, as universities shut down campuses and residences and moved to online learning in order to prevent community transmission of COVID-19, border restrictions prevented international students from returning to their home countries.
This stressful situation was compounded by the combined effects of loss of parental or spousal income and loss of wages from off-campus employment. Almost 80 percent of respondents reported that they were either “concerned” or “very concerned” about their ability to pay for education.
Surveyed students also pointed to the steep tuition costs as well as the reduction in quality of education, student services and access to campus amenities. As one respondent put it, “…now it feels like I’m paying $10,000 per semester to teach myself.”
The precarious economic situation facing international students in Canada is being exacerbated by increases in the cost of living, including a 6.5 percent rise in food prices, forcing many to turn to food banks. Food Banks Canada recorded a 20 percent rise in food bank visits during the pandemic, including 1.3 million visits in the month of March 2021 alone—the largest increase since 2008. Guru Nanak Food Bank, which operates in Surrey, British Columbia, recently told CBC News that 1,500 of their 2,200 food bank members are students.
International students comprise a highly exploited section of the labour force, with many being paid below minimum wage, often in the service industry. They are often at the mercy of their employers, since they must obtain a letter from them if they wish to apply for permanent residency after completing their studies. This dependence makes it all but impossible for international students to challenge the brutal conditions of exploitation they often face.
The number of international students enrolled in Canadian universities and colleges has grown rapidly over recent years, from 142,170 in fall 2010 to 338,782 in fall 2019, according to Statistics Canada.
University managements and governments alike have seen them as a lucrative form of revenue for the increasingly corporatized post-secondary institutions. In Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, international students pay three to four times the tuition of domestic students. The average cost of tuition for undergraduate students in arts or sciences is $23,510 compared to only $6,327 for domestic students.
In 2015-16, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the tuition fees from international students accounted for $1.28 billion in revenue, up from $620 million in 2011-12. The federal government estimates the economic impact of international students in Canada at $11 billion a year, and $5.4 billion a year just in Ontario.
This revenue stream has become all the more crucial for university budgets as governments of all political stripes have taken the axe to public funding for post-secondary institutions since the 1990s.
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