STUDIES ABROAD

Pandemic creates complications, but Canadian MBA programs are adjusting

CHUCK CHIANG

MBA programs have long touted accessibility to the global marketplace as a key selling point to potential students, but has the COVID-19 pandemic dampened demand for such programs?

The answer is somewhat complex, say top Canadian education sector officials monitoring trends since the pandemic drastically changed people’s ability to travel freely from country to country.

What is unmistakable, says industry veteran and seasoned educator Sheldon Levy, is that the existing travel restrictions and quarantine rules have definitely affected Canadian students’ ability and willingness to go abroad as part of their studies. “If it was difficult before the pandemic, it is unmistakably — and rightly — more difficult now,” says Levy, who is currently the interim president at University Canada West. “Health and safety is going to be more of a pull factor for students to stay in Canada more than ever before. The flow of students going abroad was already a trickle when compared with the intake of international students coming here, but this pandemic has made it as if the tap’s completely turned off.”

As Levy notes, even for students in globally mobile MBA programs, getting Canadians to take up opportunities to go abroad was a challenge even before the pandemic. One such example can be seen in the demand for the working

holiday programs that Canada has signed with a number of countries: where the inbound quota annually gets filled within minutes of registration opening every year, interest from outbound Canadians is tepid. “Putting the pandemic aside for a minute, Canada has for years tried to figure out strategies for more students to be able to see education opportunities outside of Canada as part of their program within Canada,” Levy says. “And in almost all cases, the following issues come up: one, language. Two, cost. And three, whether students’ time abroad is academically credited in Canada so that they don’t lose time towards graduation.”

While an MBA program with an included global component addresses the third concern, it does not address the fundamental issue of cost and language barriers.

Some schools, like the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) Sauder School of Business, have been able to adapt. Alina Yukhymets, manager of global learning at the Robert H. Lee Graduate School at Sauder, says the school previously incorporated four pre-selected international destinations as part of its MBA program’s mandatory global immersion experience.

With the pandemic now placing new complications on travel, Yukhymets says the program shifted again in 2022 to four North American destinations — Toronto, Montreal, San Francisco and San Diego. “Travel is still a part of the MBA program, this time with a North American focus,” she says. “We continue to innovate and ensure our MBA students get a global perspective either through travel, online engagement and through the diverse network that the school offers.”

Yukhymets also notes that Sauder’s MBA program overall has been on par with previous, pre-pandemic years in terms of application and student numbers. Some of this stems from the school’s curriculum, but it’s also from international students who are willing to navigate travel restrictions to attend. “Many of our international students overcame considerable challenges with their study permits and arrival in Canada,” she says. “All of them demonstrated incredible strength, determination, flexibility and resiliency in meeting their objective to arrive in Vancouver on time for the start of their in-person studies.”

Levy says that’s the flop side of the equation — that, despite the pandemic, the will for students coming to Canada for MBAs and other programs remains extremely high. “We’ve become the destination of choice,” he says. “The number of incoming students coming to Canada has reached a level not even imaginable 10 years ago.”

For Levy, the key question now is how Canada will jumpstart its outgoing student flow post-COVID, because schools have to have the students’ well-being as their paramount concern — and encouraging outbound flow during a global pandemic isn’t a good idea. When the time comes, however, Levy says it is crucial for political leaders and policy makers to push and adUniversity Canada West interim dress the three issues president Sheldon Levy says he identified, because academia itself needs pandemic restrictions have a leading voice to effect impacted students’ willingness to change. The danger of not go abroad • SUBMITTED doing so, he adds, is a very realistic economic detriment to Canada. “On the one hand, it’s the human experience of someone who’s going abroad directly,” Levy says. “It’s the life experience — I can speak to how my studies took me to Kenya, and it changed my life forever for the better. Those experiences are about the growth and development of people, and you can’t put dollars to it.

“On the other hand, as students gain more worldly experience, they become better employees. I’m sure that employers who see a candidate who picked up extra language skills or some other skills while abroad, they place a certain value on those experiences. So it’s the personal experience for an individual, but it also brings economic returns.”

IF IT WAS DIFFICULT BEFORE THE PANDEMIC, IT IS UNMISTAKABLY – AND RIGHTLY – MORE DIFFICULT NOW Sheldon Levy Interim president University Canada West