Immigration.ca - Canada Immigration News - October 2009
A new study shows that immigrant youth are more than twice as likely as their Canadian counterparts to pursue post-secondary education.
The phenomenon, which the scholars are calling the “immigrant effect”, is being attributed to a common immigrant value system more heavily focused on the opportunities Canada can provide. Many newcomers choose to migrate to this country precisely because they want a better future for their children, and “the kids understand and they work for it.”
The study found that Chinese immigrant youth have the highest post-secondary education rates, with 98.3 per cent enrolling in either university or community college before reaching 21 years of age. This trend, however, extends to immigrant youth from other regions, including the Middle East, India and Africa.
The study’s authors, though expecting to find high post-secondary education rates, were surprised at just how high the figures were.
“The numbers are so high, they don’t even seem possible,” said Ross Finnie, an economics at the University of Ottawa who helped analyse the survey data.
The rates remain higher for immigrants even if only measuring university attendance. Only 38 per cent of non-immigrant students in Canada go on to study at the university level. First-generation immigrants, those who arrived in Canada as immigrants at an early age, attend university at a 57 per cent level. Second-generation immigrants, who have been born to immigrants, were found to have a 54.3 per cent university attendance rate.
Source: The National Post
