Many Nigerians continue to travel to Canada in pursuit of higher degrees and greener pastures, as the newly-released Canadian Study approval list revealed that Nigeria ranks 8th in the ratings of countries with the highest number of study permits approval in 2019.
The report also showed that Nigeria is the only African country that made the top 15 countries with the highest study permit approvals in the year 2019.
According to the report, Canada welcomed a total of 404,165 international students in 2019, with 7,585 Nigerians receiving study permit approvals, constituting 1.88% of the total permits issued in the year. That’s a 16.1% increase compared to 6,535 recorded in 2018.
Breakdown
India, over the past five years, has consistently maintained the top spot on the list, with 139,740 study permit approvals, representing 34.6% of the total approvals in 2019, having more than quadrupled since 2015 when they received 31,925 approvals.
Second on the list is China, which received 84,710 approvals, accounting for 20.96% of the total permits issued in the year under review, while South Korea, was a distant third, receiving 17,060 permits.
France and Vietnam received 14,670 and 11,685 study permits in 2019 respectively, while Brazil and Iran received 10,270 and 9,795 permits in the same order.
Nigeria ranks eighth with 7,585 study permits. Its approval rate grew by 19.9% compared to the 6,325 received in 2015, while USA and Japan completed the ranks with 6,805 and 6,685 permits respectively.
Why school abroad?
Nigeria has received a total of 32,565 study permits from the Canadian Government in the last five years, with 2019’s figure being the highest obtained. This increase is attributed to the decline in Nigeria’s educational system, bad academic structure and the fear of spending more than the stipulated time for a degree programme due to strike actions.
Due to the pursuit of better educational standards, Nigerians travel to various countries of the world such as the United Kingdom, Ghana, USA, and Canada to acquire University degrees while also working to support themselves financially during their studies. Canada fits right into this category as it affords International Students’ study-work-immigrate package.
(READ MORE: Canada invites fresh 3,500 candidates to apply for Permanent Residence )
How it works
The study permit is a document issued by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) that allows foreign nationals to study at a designated learning institution in Canada.
This program allows international students to work in Canada in order to support themselves during their studies. Upon completing their studies, many of them are eligible to obtain a Post-Graduation Work Permit so that they can gain more Canadian work experience for a period of up to three years.
They can then apply for the more than “80 economic class immigration programs” offered by the Federal Government as well as provinces and territories. Many of these programs give preference to former international students in their selection criteria since Federal Government research shows that former international students integrate very quickly into the Canadian economy.
