Name: Life on Bay Street: The Magic of Toronto Metropolitan University With Murtaza Haider
Uploaded: 2026-01-20T17:46:42.000Z
Duration: 21 min 8 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...

Welcome everyone to another episode of Breaking Boundaries, the world's premier podcast for international students, or at least in the top 25.

I'm joined here today by Dr. Murtaza Haider of the Toronto Metropolitan University School of Business Management.

Murtaza, thank you so much for joining us today.

All right, so my first question, I was looking at your CV and it's overwhelming.

You're a professor of data science and real estate management.

You're also a research director, you run your own data analytics firm, you're a journalist.

So my first question is, when do you find time to sleep?

People who don't sleep make more mistakes than those who don't who have regular sleep.

I just try to organize things in a proper way and there's no secret sauce.

Just be a little organized and don't procrastinate.

I do have a no cell phone in the bedroom role that I've implemented and I think it's, I think it's impacted my sleep in a positive way.

Unfortunately, my 3 year old and 5 year old see things differently.

So let me, let me ask you another curiosity.

Toronto Metropolitan University, you were located in the heart of one of the world's most dynamic metropolitan areas, but

tell me a little bit more about what makes your university unique.

Many things are so distinguished about the Toronto Metropolitan University in our faculty of management, the Ted Roger School of Management, many universities.

So first of all, we are blessed with some very good institutions in Toronto.

We have Toronto Metropolitan University, we have York University and we have University of Toronto and many other good quality colleges.

What sets us apart is our business focus.

We have always been focused on careers because Ryerson or we were used to be called Ryerson University before that, Ryerson Polytechnic University.

And the evolution of this institution has been along the lines of preparing young minds for careers in all sorts of different careers, not just business or economics, but

It is a career focused approach and making our students career ready.

And as we approach this artificial intelligence era, we are now focused on making our students automation proof or robotic proof.

So this focus on careers and preparing people for life has distinguished us.

We have not embarked on those traditional, some of the traditional ways that universities work, like a focus on philosophy and whatnot.

We started off with very practical training so that, that in our DNA, the distinguishing factor has always been Preparing students for careers in whatever areas of life they choose.

And that's why we have been so fortunate that our people who applied to us, we used to be the one and we have until very recently we were the most applied to university in Canada or in Ontario, our province.

And that the reason being that our reputation has always been that if you want to build a career, if you want to get the education that prepares you for careers, come to Toronto Metropolitan University.

On your website the university describes in great detail its experiential learning.

And being in the economic hub of this part of North America I imagine confers more opportunities on this career.

I'm glad you bring it up because I am curious.

A lot of prospective international students are curious about what life looks like beyond graduation.

So for students who are eyeing a career in business management, perhaps other fields who are coming from overseas, there have been many policy shifts, probably more policy shifts forthcoming in the next few years.

What tips do you have for international students who are thinking about that post graduation career potentially in Canada, maybe back home?

Yes, Let me just start by saying that our very location in downtown Toronto, we are a downtown located university, which means that within a 10 minute walk from our campus we have half a million jobs in Toronto because we are right next to downtown.

So my, my, the Ted Rogers School of Management, the business school address is 575 Bay street and Bay street is Canada's Wall Street.

So if you say well we are located in Wall street, it's the same as in saying Wall street in New York or Bay street in Toronto.

And within, within a 1km radius there are about half a million jobs.

And that is why, because the Toronto's employment market is the employment hub of Canada.

So if you're looking into engineering or business or applied fields, chances are that the job you will get will be within walking distance of the campus.

Now the thing is that we, that is Canada came a little late to international students.

Before us it was New Zealand and then Australia and the United States and before all of them Great Britain, where international students have gone in the past.

Now as our reputation increased in Canada globally and people Learned about the 90 plus universities we have in Canada and these are all public sector universities, so they started to come from abroad to Canada.

And then at one point in 2002 we were getting about 600,000 international students to Canada, which was far more, maybe four times more than we had accepted in before the COVID pandemic.

And then those numbers have been scaled down a bit because of the capacity issues.

And also many of those students were going to colleges, not to universities.

Universities never had the capacity issue.

Most universities have tons of capacity now, despite the changes in regulations.

If you are an international student and if you're focused on getting good quality education at a university in Canada, the changes do not affect you much.

those quotas are designed to have universities get priority on getting and attracting the best students.

Because we were losing a lot of students to colleges.

I mentioned that we have public sector colleges and they're tremendously good quality colleges.

But then a lot of the private sector colleges and some were sort of dubious credentials were also got in and it started bringing in people.

And that created a little bit of problem here.

But the fact is that if you look at a Canadian university, if it says University of Toronto, if it says Toronto Metropolitan University, if it says McGill University, if it says Cape Breton universities, these are all big size, small size University, we are 46,000 students at Toronto Metropolitan University of Toronto has over 90,000 students.

Cape Breton may be a smaller institution with 8,000 students.

Canada's public sector universities are of tremendous quality, tremendous rigor and the ability to come here and study at a university allows you from a four year degree program.

If you're at an undergraduate level or a master's program, it allows you to be able to apply for a work permit after post, after graduation.

That work permit could be up to, I believe, three years.

still you can apply for a work permit and then work and gain experience related to your field of education that you just been trained.

It doesn't really matter if you want to finish your degree as an international student and may you may want to go back to your home country or you may say, you know, let me try it now, let me augment my educational experience with work experience.

So there's a very good chance, there's actually a very good.

If you're successful in completing a degree from a university, the transition into a work permit is straightforward.

And then you get the work permit and then you decide if you want to have a one, two, three year experience.

And after that, again it's your decision.

You want to stay, you want to and build a life in Canada or you want to return to your home country.

People have obligations, aging parents, family, siblings, businesses to take care of.

But it adds this freedom for you to decide, maybe I want to add another one, two or three years to my life in Canada and get practical experience.

So, yes, regulations have changed, but they do not affect universities as much.

There are additional requirements that we have to go through to get our students in, international students, but

that does not really create a big problem.

It is still the best place to be for international students to get higher education.

I think it's very well said and probably puts a lot of minds at ease.

You know, you mentioned the size of Toronto Metropolitan, 46,000 students.

we had international students, but it was one student from this country and one student from that country.

And I think they often felt like they were on an island.

So, you know, moving beyond the course curriculum, you know, socially, with 46,000 students, many of whom are international, is it fair to say that students are more likely to find cohorts, peers of the same creed, nationality, religion, affinity, et cetera?

Now that's where Toronto's magic comes in.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Life on Bay Street: The Magic of Toronto Metropolitan University With Murtaza Haider

recommend

tremendous

matter

experience