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International education as soft power? The contributions and challenges of Canadian foreign policy to the internationalization of higher education

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Abstract

This paper explores the role of the Canadian federal government in two foreign policy areas: overseas development assistance and international cultural relations by providing a brief history of the federal government’s engagement in both policy areas and highlighting the contributions and challenges of Canadian foreign policy to the internationalization of Canadian higher education. More broadly, the paper explores the unique characteristics of the Canadian federal government’s role in higher education policy making, and in particular, its relations with academics and the university community. Ironically in a world increasingly characterized by greater international education flows, in Canada, there has been a narrowing of vision, a focus on more short rather than long term objectives and a limited engagement of dialogue between academics and the government to promote both development assistance and international education as Canada’s soft power.

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Notes

  1. DFAIT has undertaken four major foreign policy reviews (1970, 1994, 2003 and 2005). The history of the Department reveals several eras of structural organization and re-organization in response to the changing nature of Canada’s foreign policy orientation, which over the years, has come to be firmly and consistently grounded in a move towards an integration of trade within its foreign policy portfolio. This is best reflected in its most current title, the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT).

    It is important to note that while the Canadian federal government has exclusive authority over external affairs, the specific characteristics of the Canadian federation result in the continuous tension between the federal government and the provinces with respect to foreign policy. For examples refer, John Daniel Allison, “Federalism, Diplomacy and Education: Canada’s Role in Education-Related International Activities, 1960–1984,” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto, 1999) and Kettner (1980), Canadian Federalism and the International Activities of Three Provinces: Alberta, Ontario and Quebec (Master’s thesis), Simon Fraser University.

  2. Starting with development assistance primarily to South Asian countries in the 1950s, several Commonwealth member countries were added to the list of recipients of Canadian ODA in the 1960s. In the 1970s, francophone African and the Latin American countries were also added (Pestieau and Tait 2004).

  3. Relative to other countries, although Canada’s share to ODA is close to the OECD average, it is far less than several donor countries and accounts for less than 3% of all aid from the OECD countries (Goldfarb and Tapp 2006).

  4. ODA through CIDA is dispersed over several countries and several agencies and thus spread too thin. It is focused more on bilateral rather than multilateral aid, multilateral aid considered to be the more effective policy approach. In developing policies, it is highly influential to historical precedent and political considerations rather then explicit set off aid effectiveness criteria. Canada’s most recent top bilateral aid recipients, Afghanistan and Iran, are cited as examples of a politicized policy process as neither of the two countries are necessarily among the poorest countries in the world.

  5. Ironically, Brown suggests that CIDA’s ability to independently maneuver its own policy has become increasingly difficult, as its aid budget increases and it gains importance within the federal government (Morrison 1998; Brown 2008).

  6. The International Academic Relations Division, known in 2006 as International Education and Youth Division, has changed in structure and name several times. It first started in the 1960s as the Academic Relations Section under the Information Division of the Bureau of Public Affairs and subsequently became Academic Relations Division, under the Bureau of International Cultural Relations in 1978, then the International Academic Relations Division Bureau for Global Issues in the mid 1990s, and was back under a newly structured Bureau of International Cultural Relations, Division of Strategic Policy and Public Diplomacy by the early 2000s.

  7. For example in 1983, Canada’s ICR budget of $7 million/year was dismal compared to France’s $340 million/year, Britain’s $127 million/year, and Germany’s $200 million/year. In 1990, the Canadian Federal government spent $80.9 m total on ICR, but this was still much less in comparison to France who spent $1.5 billion the same year, Germany’s $1.1billion, Japan’s $1.6 billion and the UK’s $765.1million (Joyal 1994).

  8. Tier 1 provides funds for large programs up to $3 million over 6 years and is administered by CIDA; Tier 2 supports 6 year projects of up to $1 million and is administered by the Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada (AUCC). The UPCDP has objectives are to build capacity of educational and training institutions in developing countries and to train the human resources required to ensure their sustainable and equitable development. CIDA devoted $11.8 million to UPCDP in 1999–2000, $11.4 million in 2000–2001 and $12.3 million in 2001–2002 (Bond and Lemasson 1999; CIDA 2006).

  9. One direct result is considered to be the growth of an impressive cadre of Canadian academics with development experience and expertise. Another has been the growth of the NGO sector with links to post secondary institutions, in particularly, two prominent organizations, Canadian Universities Service Overseas (CUSO) and the World University Services of Canada (WUSC), whose official presence on a number of Canadian campuses has encouraged volunteer and work abroad opportunities among several Canadian students. Bond and Lemasson (1999) highlight CIDA’s role in increasing the number of university actors in international development cooperation and in creating the conditions for even greater university engagement, in particular they suggest that these activities had a ripple effect on university curriculum. For example, there was a growth of undergraduate and graduate programs in International Development Studies, increase in language courses taught by universities and new international research partnerships. These impacts continue to be reflected in institutional initiatives nominated for the Scotiabank-AUCC Awards for Excellence in Internationalization Program.

    The interest in international development continues to grow on Canadian campuses with IDS identified as one of the fastest growing programs. Similarly, universities indicate a medium to high priority in their internationalization strategy to recruitment of international students from developing countries and develop exchange and other mobility programs for Canadian students with institutions in the South (Knight 2000).

  10. From the 1960s itself, there are reports that universities found establishing contracts with the external aid office adversarial and negotiations an extremely trying process.

  11. UPCD programs are targeted exclusively towards institutional capacity building while academics have little interest in partnerships that do not involve some possibilities for research and publications. IDRC has been set up to fund development research, however, as mentioned before, there is no direct link between this research and the CIDA projects in which faculty are involved.

  12. Some examples include the Resident Visitors program, contracting with faculty for research and study in international affairs, commissioning a comprehensive report on international and area studies programs at Canadian universities, sponsoring seminars and conferences on foreign policy and lending department personnel as resources or speakers for academic conferences. It also provided a special grant to support the Centre for Asian Studies in Vancouver, B.C., to strengthen the knowledge and understanding of Asia Pacific countries (Trilokekar 1997).

  13. It provided Canadian scholars with opportunities for exchanges and visits to international conferences, opportunities to teach at foreign universities, and to have their books and articles bought for teaching and research purposes abroad. The faculty enrichment program resulted in increased contacts between a few select Canadian and international academics.

  14. Several governments provided similar support to their academic institutions free of cost, examples included the United States Information Agency, UK’s British Council, Germany’s DAAD and Goethe Institutes, EduFrance and the network of Alliance Française, The Netherlands’s NUFFIC, and the Japan Foundation.

  15. The roundtable included a few key stakeholder groups and set up an advisory board of 21 members represented from the government, industry as well as the educational community.

  16. HRSDC contributes $1.6 million annually to the North American Cooperation in Higher Education, Research and Training initiative and the Canada-EU for Cooperation in Higher Education and Training. The programs have been running for 14 years and jointly they sponsor nearly 200 Canadian students through institutional partnerships each year (HRSDC website 2008).

  17. Canadian universities have developed a far greater dependence on CIDA for funding and program opportunities than they have to DFAIT for ICR related support. Consequently, their international development related activities are also far more vulnerable to changes in CIDA funding, structure and policy approaches. On the other hand, the consequence of a weak ICR policy approach has resulted in a more ad-hoc, independent and diversified approach to internationalization by individual Canadian institutions, even in areas of DFAIT programming, such as the marketing and recruitment of international students and the development of mobility programs and international exchange agreements. Institutions have been left to their own devises to secure funds for these initiatives through re-allocation of their own budgets, private sponsorships or with the support of new monies from their respective provincial governments. Canadian universities certainly tap into available resources such as the international scholarship programs, the CSPA, and HRSDC’s IAM programs; however, they have not developed a dependency on any of these initiatives as core support for their internationalization efforts.

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    Roopa Desai Trilokekar

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Trilokekar, R.D. International education as soft power? The contributions and challenges of Canadian foreign policy to the internationalization of higher education. High Educ 59, 131–147 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-009-9240-y

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