Name: A Focus on Quality: Mike Henniger on Canada's Enduring Appeal as a Top Destination
Uploaded: 2026-01-18T17:42:13.000Z
Duration: 19 min 58 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hello, I'm John Clark with the TOEFL program.

Welcome to the world's premier podcast for international students, or at least in the top 1000.

I'm joined today by Mike Henniger of Illum Student Advisory Services.

Now, the topic at hand today is the wild world of Canada, which has been the most interesting place in international education over the last 18 months.

You could argue the last four or five years.

But before we get to that topic, Mike, just briefly share a little bit about your work at illum.

So, yeah, I'm a lifelong international educator.

I've never done anything else in my career but work in international education and specifically recruitment.

Illum Student Advisory Services is based in Vancouver, Canada.

We have a hundred staff, around a hundred staff worldwide with offices in Africa, China, Latin America, Southeast Asia and beyond.

And basically what we do is we help universities and colleges connect with international students and we help international students get the information that they need to make the right decision on the decision on the institution that they plan to study at.

I think as we go into the conversation today, John, we're going to see that it is more and more complex than ever to make the choice of where to study.

And there's a lot of questions in students and families minds, and

a loom's just kind of positioned to help them get the assurance that they are making the right decision and then they have the information that they need.

Well, I'm not even looking to study abroad and I need assurances.

So the first question I had for you, Canada, over the last year, we've had pretty significant study caps.

We've had the elimination of the student direct stream.

There have been wholesale changes to postgraduate work permits for students that are still interested in studying in Canada.

And by the way, there will still be hundreds of thousands of new students who enroll at Canadian institutions this year.

I think the most important thing for a student or a family to understand if they're in South Asia or they're in Africa or anywhere in the world and they're looking to come to Canada, is that these changes that have been made by the Canadian government are in the best interest of the international students that want to come here.

And I said in my introduction that I have never done anything else in my career besides international student recruitment, the majority of it coming to Canada.

And there's very few people that can argue that over the past five years, international education Canada grew into something that it shouldn't have.

Canada has built its brand over the last two decades on the quality of the education that we have.

We have some of the best education in the world here in Canada.

So a student coming here who's studying at a Canadian university or studying at a Canadian college could be assured that they were getting the highest level of instruction, the highest level of education.

We started to lose that just because of the sheer volume.

And we had students that weren't serious students coming to institutions that weren't serious institutions.

And the government has really looked to reduce that.

And I think everyone agrees that that's a good thing.

Now, as always with governments when they roll out things and you know, when non specialist scenarios, people who don't know anything about international education start to make policy changes in international education, it can seem to be very blunt and it can seem to be very unsophisticated.

And that's what happened with all of the changes that come out the study caps, the reduction of the spp, all of those type of things.

At the end of the day, what Canada is looking for is we are looking for smart, motivated people who want to come to our country and want to pursue an education and want to better their lives.

If a student fits into that category, Canada still remains the best place in the world, in my opinion, for them to study.

I noticed with my team around the world and just attending recruitment events over the past decade, you know, you meet students, they say, I want to come study in Canada.

And you say, oh, what do you want to study?

Like, oh, what's a good program to study?

We want people that have a plan, we want people that have a focus, we want people that are looking to excel.

And so I think, especially if you're parents of a young person looking to come to Canada and you look at your son and your daughter and you see a motivated young individual who really wants to excel and really wants to go and achieve their study dreams and then the career of their dreams after that, Canada remains a fantastic place to study.

So I go back to summarize that, to say that these changes, well, confusing and I mean for us in the sector, traumatic I would say at the end of the day, when we look back in two or three years, these are serving the international students that are coming to Canada and that's what it's all about.

So Canada remains a very, very good place for you to come if you are a serious student that wants to study.

In a serious program, in a serious institution and get a career and really look to drive your life forward.

Canada is still, in my opinion, the best place in the world to do that.

So the headline I see is, despite the changes, Canada remains open for business.

And I think we have, you know, just hundreds of excellent institutions across Canada still really want to attract the best and the, and

And I think if you're doing your research and you know, the school and you know, we have students showing up at schools in Canada over the past five years and they didn't even know what city they were going to.

Like, they're like, oh, you know, they're, they're 300 kilometers outside of Vancouver.

And they said, oh, I thought I was in Vancouver.

I'm like, you don't have Google in your country.

And I think what we want to do is we want to really focus back on the quality of education that we have here.

And that's the type of students that should be looking to come to Canada.

This makes me think I live in Ohio, where just a stone's throw away from Miami University of Ohio, which is sometimes confused by international students for Miami University in Florida, which vastly different climates.

Although a quick pitch, I do love the Redhawks of Miami of Ohio.

The weather must look a little different though, no?

Of course that's Fahrenheit, so that's meaningless to most of the world.

But Mike, I want to double click on one thing you mentioned.

You mentioned in the past few years you've talked to a lot of students who are eyeing a Canadian institution with very little thought as to what program they're pursuing.

And I know with the recent changes to eligibility for a post graduation work permit, the government has identified a bucket of jobs or study programs for which students will be available for postgraduate work.

Without going too deep into the nitty gritty of the legislation itself, do you see certain industries for 20, 25 and beyond where international students will have a good shot at obtaining a job after graduation?

This is a topic that we could do a two hour podcast and just this topic alone, John, it's, it's such a wide, wide topic.

You know, if I go back to when I was studying in university and if I heard things like, you know, YouTube, YouTuber, blockchain engineer, when I was in University, those things didn't exist.

None of, none of those jobs even existed.

And I think so many of the jobs that are going to be 20, 30, 20, 35 don't exist now.

You know, I read about jobs called human machine, Human machine team manager.

I heard about AI ethicists like these things.

I don't even know what they are, but they're coming.

In general, there are things that stand out.

One, anything that has to do with helping people, healthcare, medicine, I think is going to continue to be elderly care, child care, those things are going to continue to be very strong.

You know, I look at wonderful university here in Canada, University of Windsor, and

you know their focus, they have an excellent Master's of engineering program.

I see the graduates coming out of that program and getting excellent jobs coming out, and

it still qualifies for the postgrad work permit.

So anything to do with STEM I really feel is going to be strong.

But I want to switch gears here a little bit on this question and I really feel that, you know, when I look before the, before we started recording, me and John were talking about, we both have children very much the same age, daughters.