Where in the world are Canada’s universities?

From her modest classrooms tucked away in a Hong Kong convention centre, Janet de Silva, dean of Ivey Asia – a branch campus of the University of Western Ontario’s Richard Ivey School of Business – is battling the likes of Columbia, Harvard and the London Business School for student enrolment and revenue, writes Caroline Alphonso for The Globe and Mail.

“A lot of people are out here in a very, very serious way. It’s a challenge as a Canadian educational institution,” De Silva says. “The minute you go into Asia, a very brand-conscious market, they simply believe schools out of the UK and US are best, and Canada just isn’t as visible as an education brand.”

When the Ivey branch was established in 1998, it was the first North American business school to set up a permanent campus in China. Since then, a growing number of universities have established centres abroad. The leaders of the pack have been described as ‘multinational universities’, institutions whose thirst for expansion into new markets is akin to that of global corporations. For Canada, observers say, the new reality in education has been much too late to sink in – the country might as well wave a white flag.
Full report on The Globe and Mail site