The International Student Your Town Never Hears About

By Midya U · Midya U Advisory

In brief: National economic-impact figures for international students — $39.0 billion of GDP, 407,262 jobs in Canada in 2024 — rarely change how a host town feels about enrolment growth. What moves local opinion is one named person: a graduate working at the regional hospital, the mill, or the shop down the street. Finding and telling that story, with consent, is a marketing and communications job, and the alumni office already has the list to start it.

I came to Canada at the age of 16 as an international student. I started in marketing as an intern and worked my way to VP of Marketing and Communications at a Canadian university, and in 2026 went on to open my own business.

I'm telling you this because the public conversation about international students in Canada very seldom includes someone like me, even though the country's own figures suggest there are a lot of us. What people hear about is caps, housing issues and fraud cases. The sector answers with a national GDP figure, and the national GDP figure doesn't change the public sentiment.

What does the economic case for international students actually say?

It's bigger than most people assume, and it's all national.

Global Affairs Canada's latest economic impact study, covering 2024, puts international student spending at $47.5 billion. That works out to $39.0 billion of GDP, 407,262 jobs and $9.4 billion in tax revenue. British Columbia's share was $7.4 billion of GDP and 86,470 jobs.

Europe has gone further and followed students past graduation. The Dutch government's economic policy bureau, the CPB, reported in August 2026 that a non-EEA university graduate contributes about €243,000 more to public finances over a lifetime than they cost. In Germany, a study by the German Economic Institute for the DAAD projected that 34% of the 2023 international intake will stay until retirement, with a lifetime public surplus of €23.1 billion. I don't know of an equivalent lifetime study for Canada, and I'd like to see one.

Why don't those numbers change anyone's mind?

Because those are just numbers, and numbers don't easily translate to people's day-to-day lives. It's easy to skim over the numbers and forget about them two minutes later.

ICEF Monitor made this argument well on September 17, 2026, borrowing from the "Made to Stick" framework. It pointed to UK research from the Centre for Cities showing universities account for 31% of high-skilled jobs in Stoke and 24% in Hull. Those figures land in Stoke in a way a national total never does, because people in Stoke can see the jobs.

Isn't the housing complaint fair?

Partly, yes. Even the Dutch study that found students pay for themselves noted the pressure they put on housing in the short term. In a lot of Canadian college towns, residents connected rising rents to rising enrolment, fairly or not. Marketing can't fix a housing shortage. What it can do is stop the institution sounding like it hasn't noticed one, and then tell the part of the story people aren't hearing.

Who should tell the local version of the story?

You should. It's a marketing and communications job.

Government relations will keep making the national case to Ottawa, which is their job. The neighbours in your own town are a different audience, and they are reached the way any local audience is: local media, local employers, faces they might recognise from the pharmacy counter.

What would the story look like?

One person, one employer, one local problem.

A nursing graduate from your 2019 intake who now works nights at the regional hospital. A business graduate who opened a shop on your main street and hires four people. An engineer at the mill. Name the person, the job and their impact, with their consent of course, and publish it where residents already look. The local paper, the chamber of commerce newsletter, the employer's own social channels. Your viewbook is written for applicants, and residents never see it.

Start by asking your alumni office for international graduates who still live within an hour of campus. If nobody has ever pulled that list, that's worth knowing too. Ten names is enough for a year of stories.

That list is also the honest test of your own recruitment promise. If you can't find ten, that tells you something about your outcomes that's worth knowing before your next viewbook goes to print, and it connects to the brand question in The Lesson Canada Should Take From Australia.

I was one of those students. Somewhere near your campus there are graduates with a version of my story, and at the moment the only people who know it are their employers.

If your institution's positioning needs rebuilding around the students you have now, that's the work I do in Brand Repositioning.