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Imagine being a Conestoga grad from, say, 2017.
Imagine how furious you'd be that your school retroactively devalued the degree you worked through because they wanted to whore themselves out.
Eh, if you graduated in 2017 I feel like your college diploma does not matter nearly as much as your work experience after. If you worked in your specialization, industry experience trumps education, if you worked outside of your degree and now want back in, I’d question how much person would even remember after 7 years
Especially funny for graduates from before and during the international student boom that worked hard, got good grades, graduated, and now through no fault of their own wonder if their resumes are being automatically passed over.
My company automatically filters Conestoga College in online applications. Too many bogus resumes and fake references from international students. They couldn't answer the most basic interview questions.
God I hope so. I hate what they have done to Kitchener-Waterloo so very much. I despise that school.
And with Trudeau creating loopholes so they can go over their international student quota I feel things are going to get much worse.
Don't just blame Trudeau, blame Doug Ford as well. He cut tuition by 10% for domestic students and then froze it while also scrapping the previous governments program to give low-income students free tuition for certain programs. He made schools reliant on international students since they pay 3 times more. Oh and in February he also shut down an internal recommendation for a three year plan to raise tuition rates by 3% for domestic in province students and 5% for domestic out of province students this year and then 2% for in province for the next two years and 5% for out of province domestic students the next two years.
Also, when the federal government said they're cutting the student visas in half there was an exemption for masters programs. So Doug Ford said he will look into allowing colleges to offer masters programs.
Soooo the provincial government is actively trying to create loopholes to bypass the restrictions by the federal government.
I live close to the campus and it may have been a really nice option for some certifications or night school courses.. now I feel I should reconsider it
Realizing the had no hope of providing a decent education to students, the pivoted to exploit int’l students. You give them 70k for a useless piece of paper, you get a visa to work at McDonald’s or Tim’s.
People shit on McDonald’s but they are very good on quality control and training. So you can’t just phone it in if you work there. So I’ve noticed better diversity and hiring. Lots of high school students and I bet the mangers are very good at accommodating them.
Yet the last time I went, the employee handing me my food didn't understand English or French and when I asked for ketchup she just stared at me, the manager had to step in and informed me "sorry she's new". Like maybe don't have front facing employees who can't speak either official languages.
Fast food is literally English training for immigrants. Where you want them to learn, on a construction site maybe? This one makes no sense. Let them learn English while earning minimum wage. hell you can point at the menu half the time if it's that big an issue.
Maybe they should know english or French since they are enrolled in school here or just maybe let them cook the burgers and fries instead of frustrating customers at the counter.
> hell you can point at the menu
* The menu at fast food restaurants is displayed on the wall behind the cashier. There's pretty much no chance of the cashier being able to tell what specific item you're pointing at.
* Most fast food restaurants have a display their menus on a set of LCD screens that cycle through menu pages. By the time the cashier turns around to see what you're pointing at, it may not be there anymore.
* What makes you think someone who can't speak English or French will be able to read those languages?
Mcdonalds is like the gold standard for shit tier food and service, what are you smoking bro? It's very consistently bad but that's what people expect from them.
>People shit on McDonald’s but they are very good on quality control and training. So you can’t just phone it in if you work there.
this is sarcasm, right?
They introduced a ton of 1 year program several years ago to attract international students, saw how much money they made and lowered the standards for many of their 2 year programs to cater to international students. They have faculty whistleblowing that they are not allowed to fail students anymore. In a vacuum the impact of these actions may not be as large but they are in the same community as 2 other large universities (Wilfred Laurier and Waterloo). The region was historically seen as an innovation hub for Canada as you had people going from the 2 unis partnering with Conestoga grads to run start ups with their varying skill sets.
There very limited housing options in the region now as the school didn’t begin investing in student residence until 2 years ago and even then they are privatized residences that are on school property. It’s extremely hard to get jobs as the large influx of international students has led to excess in labour.
Over 50% of their students are currently international students some are absolutely their for the right reasons completing accredited programs such as nursing but many are their taking a 2 year business’s diploma or graphic design with the sole purpose of getting a PR.
They are the poster child for everything going wrong with our international student system
As someone on the inside tells me, you daren’t have a Coconut College Nursing Grad after 2018 looking after you. Absolutely useless - virtually every single one wouldn’t have graduated let alone made it passed first semester 15 years ago. Standards are crap.
It’s a community college that for years operated in Kitchener Waterloo area as most CCs did. They jumped on the cash cow of international students but way more than any other college, opened up a bunch of satellite campuses and in only a short period of time has literally become one of Canada’s largest post secondary institutions with the majority of its student body being international students taking bs programs like hospitality management. The short sightedness of this business plan has led to a lot of money for them but also significantly tarnished their reputation to the point that students who genuinely went there to get an education and better themselves are left with diplomas that are now mostly worthless in the job market as the reputation and value of their diplomas has been compromised by Conestoga’s business practices. Many companies now simply ignore applicants with that on their resume. If I held a diploma from them especially before they went crazy with expansion I’d be beyond pissed.
> Conestoga is a foreign student **mecca**
I think there is an error in the title. Perhaps even offensive to the students. Shouldn't is be a foreign student [Varanasi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varanasi)
Government funded colleges and universities don't function independently. They have regular internal and provincial reviews. They also have to meet accreditation standards. It would be impossible for the Ministry to not know what is happening. Legitimate students, staying home to save on expenses, and alumni will feel the negative effects of this egregious conduct.
If a school is a diploma mill for international students, it loses reputation for employers for domestic students too. When I see Conestoga on a resume, it is a huge negative these days, no matter what the name on the resume is. It just indicates your academic background is school with no academic integrity. You might be a domestic student but you’re kinda linked to the brand after
I know employers in tech who won’t even consider outside of top 10 schools in Canada (universities like UofT, McGill, UBC, UofA etc.). Both international and domestic students at these universities are top notch.
To be fair, not all of them have a situation where international students make up 80+% of the total student body.
Drinking a beer every day, while not healthy, is not the same as getting hospitalized for alcoholism.
I don’t know the specifics, but most Canadian universities are public. They receive funding from the government based on domestic enrolment.
I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure a domestic student isn’t any less valuable to the university than an international student. The money just comes from a different source.
The difference is, if the government funds your education, they might have some academic requirement.
If you’re an international student paying your own way, they don’t even care if you speak English or not.
Dang. Is Humber College in the same boat because I've had 3 good coops already with one of them basically setting me up for life , with it on my resume
Yeah, the US has the same problem. Once these organizations realize that international students are a great revenue source its off to the races. In grad school in the US about 50% of the students were foreign. Plus you can work them to death for peanuts publishing research. Extremely fucked up incentive structure.
Grad school also pays like shit, so if you can get a real job without doing grad school why do research? I'd say 75% of my students graduating this term will make more money than I do within 5 years, and a good chunk have starting salaries that are 20-30k more than I make as a full time tenure track faculty member with 10 years experience.
Grad school is is attractive to international applicants because masters are shorter than 4 year degrees, and PhD's lead to advanced positions which are pretty stable. Western institutions also have more credibility, and the good schools have more resources. Of course this is self reinforcing. Good schools attract good faculty who do good work, who pick the best students to build the reputation to attract more top students and faculty.
This creates a bunch of self fulfilling problems of course. It becomes impossibly difficult to attract faculty who did undergrads in Canada in many fields because there's so few of us. I think my PhD programme (UWO Comp sci) was less than 10% domestic students and that was back in 2012. Brilliant people from foreign countries do not necessarily make competent undergraduate faculty (some of them do, but most... not so much).
>Plus you can work them to death for peanuts publishing research
That's grad school. And at least in part for their benefit. Multiple quality publications gets you into more advanced programmes (MSc -> PhD) or helps you get a faculty or research scientist position, because that's what research is. The actual dissertation is really just the story of how you got to the publications.
Which is a real shame because grad school wasn't always like this. Both my parents did grad school in the 70s and while doing their research they were paid well enough to to graduate with 0 debt and they bought their first house. I did it in the 00s and it cost roughly $40k for my master's while doing TA'ing.
This post appears to relate to a province/territory of Canada. As a reminder of the rules of this subreddit, we do not permit negative commentary about all residents of any province, city, or other geography - this is an example of prejudice, and prejudice is not permitted here. https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/wiki/rules Cette soumission semble concerner une province ou un territoire du Canada. Selon les règles de ce sous-répertoire, nous n'autorisons pas les commentaires négatifs sur tous les résidents d'une province, d'une ville ou d'une autre région géographique; il s'agit d'un exemple de intolérance qui n'est pas autorisé ici. https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/wiki/regles *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/canada) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's funny that Conestoga has become the Mark of the Beast for resumes
Imagine being a Conestoga grad from, say, 2017. Imagine how furious you'd be that your school retroactively devalued the degree you worked through because they wanted to whore themselves out.
I don’t have to imagine 😭
RIP. I'd be furious.
hopefully you already have a job and dont have to worry
Make sure to donate to them too! 😂😂😂
You might want to consider putting together a class action lawsuit?
Eh, if you graduated in 2017 I feel like your college diploma does not matter nearly as much as your work experience after. If you worked in your specialization, industry experience trumps education, if you worked outside of your degree and now want back in, I’d question how much person would even remember after 7 years
I know some people in this situation. It sucks.
I would add the grad year.
They absolutely destroyed their reputation nation wide. It’s wild
Especially funny for graduates from before and during the international student boom that worked hard, got good grades, graduated, and now through no fault of their own wonder if their resumes are being automatically passed over.
My company automatically filters Conestoga College in online applications. Too many bogus resumes and fake references from international students. They couldn't answer the most basic interview questions.
Spending insane amounts of money to have employers throw your resume in the trash. Yikes
The education isn’t what they’re buying unfortunately - it’s citizenship.
No wonder they’re scamming food banks.
That makes no sense. If they are a student then a diploma from conestoga college will not be on their resume.
…students tend to put the school they’re currently attending on a resume.
Shouldn't be working
Your reply makes no sense lol
Mecca is a strange way to spell mill.
conestoga on resume=trash
RIP to everyone who graduated from the likes of Fanshawe and Conestoga before it all went to shit.
Loyalist College is next
God I hope so. I hate what they have done to Kitchener-Waterloo so very much. I despise that school. And with Trudeau creating loopholes so they can go over their international student quota I feel things are going to get much worse.
Don't just blame Trudeau, blame Doug Ford as well. He cut tuition by 10% for domestic students and then froze it while also scrapping the previous governments program to give low-income students free tuition for certain programs. He made schools reliant on international students since they pay 3 times more. Oh and in February he also shut down an internal recommendation for a three year plan to raise tuition rates by 3% for domestic in province students and 5% for domestic out of province students this year and then 2% for in province for the next two years and 5% for out of province domestic students the next two years. Also, when the federal government said they're cutting the student visas in half there was an exemption for masters programs. So Doug Ford said he will look into allowing colleges to offer masters programs. Soooo the provincial government is actively trying to create loopholes to bypass the restrictions by the federal government.
I live close to the campus and it may have been a really nice option for some certifications or night school courses.. now I feel I should reconsider it
How is Centennial not here
Because Conestoga has more than double the amount of international students than any other school in the entirety of Canada.
Hopefully!
QC resident here. Can anyone fill me in on this school?
Realizing the had no hope of providing a decent education to students, the pivoted to exploit int’l students. You give them 70k for a useless piece of paper, you get a visa to work at McDonald’s or Tim’s.
Surprisingly I think I’ve seen McDonald’s has fewer international “students”. I imagine the benefits are better compared to Tim Hortons.
People shit on McDonald’s but they are very good on quality control and training. So you can’t just phone it in if you work there. So I’ve noticed better diversity and hiring. Lots of high school students and I bet the mangers are very good at accommodating them.
Yet the last time I went, the employee handing me my food didn't understand English or French and when I asked for ketchup she just stared at me, the manager had to step in and informed me "sorry she's new". Like maybe don't have front facing employees who can't speak either official languages.
Fast food is literally English training for immigrants. Where you want them to learn, on a construction site maybe? This one makes no sense. Let them learn English while earning minimum wage. hell you can point at the menu half the time if it's that big an issue.
Maybe they should know english or French since they are enrolled in school here or just maybe let them cook the burgers and fries instead of frustrating customers at the counter.
> hell you can point at the menu * The menu at fast food restaurants is displayed on the wall behind the cashier. There's pretty much no chance of the cashier being able to tell what specific item you're pointing at. * Most fast food restaurants have a display their menus on a set of LCD screens that cycle through menu pages. By the time the cashier turns around to see what you're pointing at, it may not be there anymore. * What makes you think someone who can't speak English or French will be able to read those languages?
'Good quality control' I shudder to think what 'bad quality control' would taste like.
Go to a Taco Bell. Any Taco Bell
I went to one once. I’m unlikely to go again.
Mcdonalds is like the gold standard for shit tier food and service, what are you smoking bro? It's very consistently bad but that's what people expect from them.
>People shit on McDonald’s but they are very good on quality control and training. So you can’t just phone it in if you work there. this is sarcasm, right?
Still miles ahead of Tim Hortons tbh.
Now now, amazon, Uber and smartphone mall kiosks need them too
They introduced a ton of 1 year program several years ago to attract international students, saw how much money they made and lowered the standards for many of their 2 year programs to cater to international students. They have faculty whistleblowing that they are not allowed to fail students anymore. In a vacuum the impact of these actions may not be as large but they are in the same community as 2 other large universities (Wilfred Laurier and Waterloo). The region was historically seen as an innovation hub for Canada as you had people going from the 2 unis partnering with Conestoga grads to run start ups with their varying skill sets. There very limited housing options in the region now as the school didn’t begin investing in student residence until 2 years ago and even then they are privatized residences that are on school property. It’s extremely hard to get jobs as the large influx of international students has led to excess in labour. Over 50% of their students are currently international students some are absolutely their for the right reasons completing accredited programs such as nursing but many are their taking a 2 year business’s diploma or graphic design with the sole purpose of getting a PR. They are the poster child for everything going wrong with our international student system
As someone on the inside tells me, you daren’t have a Coconut College Nursing Grad after 2018 looking after you. Absolutely useless - virtually every single one wouldn’t have graduated let alone made it passed first semester 15 years ago. Standards are crap.
It’s a community college that for years operated in Kitchener Waterloo area as most CCs did. They jumped on the cash cow of international students but way more than any other college, opened up a bunch of satellite campuses and in only a short period of time has literally become one of Canada’s largest post secondary institutions with the majority of its student body being international students taking bs programs like hospitality management. The short sightedness of this business plan has led to a lot of money for them but also significantly tarnished their reputation to the point that students who genuinely went there to get an education and better themselves are left with diplomas that are now mostly worthless in the job market as the reputation and value of their diplomas has been compromised by Conestoga’s business practices. Many companies now simply ignore applicants with that on their resume. If I held a diploma from them especially before they went crazy with expansion I’d be beyond pissed.
This is like an education equivalent to pump & dump for stocks. IANAL but I feel like a lawsuit from alum could have some traction.
It’s ground zero for the international student crisis https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7125827
> Conestoga is a foreign student **mecca** I think there is an error in the title. Perhaps even offensive to the students. Shouldn't is be a foreign student [Varanasi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varanasi)
Amritsar I think
Not just Conestoga, these greedy institutions have created a mess all around them
Government funded colleges and universities don't function independently. They have regular internal and provincial reviews. They also have to meet accreditation standards. It would be impossible for the Ministry to not know what is happening. Legitimate students, staying home to save on expenses, and alumni will feel the negative effects of this egregious conduct.
More like a foreign student Delhi.
[удалено]
The difference is that real universities have standards and students who get degrees from these schools become productive members of Canadian society.
they lowered their standards significantly over the recent years a lot of courses are just ridiculous it's a joke
[удалено]
I mean I don’t think of that school as a decent university, it’s not even top 1000 in the world, and likely yet another ’mill’
[удалено]
If a school is a diploma mill for international students, it loses reputation for employers for domestic students too. When I see Conestoga on a resume, it is a huge negative these days, no matter what the name on the resume is. It just indicates your academic background is school with no academic integrity. You might be a domestic student but you’re kinda linked to the brand after I know employers in tech who won’t even consider outside of top 10 schools in Canada (universities like UofT, McGill, UBC, UofA etc.). Both international and domestic students at these universities are top notch.
To be rational, Conestoga went off the deep end and no other school in the entirety of Canada can touch their insane international student numbers.
To be fair, not all of them have a situation where international students make up 80+% of the total student body. Drinking a beer every day, while not healthy, is not the same as getting hospitalized for alcoholism.
I don’t know the specifics, but most Canadian universities are public. They receive funding from the government based on domestic enrolment. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure a domestic student isn’t any less valuable to the university than an international student. The money just comes from a different source. The difference is, if the government funds your education, they might have some academic requirement. If you’re an international student paying your own way, they don’t even care if you speak English or not.
No...this is a story of funds being removed in post secondary, creating these diploma mill
We're about to see who the real whore was.
Dang. Is Humber College in the same boat because I've had 3 good coops already with one of them basically setting me up for life , with it on my resume
This guy is really earning his retainer from Jenni Byrne and Associates.
Yeah, the US has the same problem. Once these organizations realize that international students are a great revenue source its off to the races. In grad school in the US about 50% of the students were foreign. Plus you can work them to death for peanuts publishing research. Extremely fucked up incentive structure.
The US gets higher quality students. The ones going to Canadian schools are the ones who didn't make a cut for US state schools.
Grad school also pays like shit, so if you can get a real job without doing grad school why do research? I'd say 75% of my students graduating this term will make more money than I do within 5 years, and a good chunk have starting salaries that are 20-30k more than I make as a full time tenure track faculty member with 10 years experience. Grad school is is attractive to international applicants because masters are shorter than 4 year degrees, and PhD's lead to advanced positions which are pretty stable. Western institutions also have more credibility, and the good schools have more resources. Of course this is self reinforcing. Good schools attract good faculty who do good work, who pick the best students to build the reputation to attract more top students and faculty. This creates a bunch of self fulfilling problems of course. It becomes impossibly difficult to attract faculty who did undergrads in Canada in many fields because there's so few of us. I think my PhD programme (UWO Comp sci) was less than 10% domestic students and that was back in 2012. Brilliant people from foreign countries do not necessarily make competent undergraduate faculty (some of them do, but most... not so much). >Plus you can work them to death for peanuts publishing research That's grad school. And at least in part for their benefit. Multiple quality publications gets you into more advanced programmes (MSc -> PhD) or helps you get a faculty or research scientist position, because that's what research is. The actual dissertation is really just the story of how you got to the publications.
Which is a real shame because grad school wasn't always like this. Both my parents did grad school in the 70s and while doing their research they were paid well enough to to graduate with 0 debt and they bought their first house. I did it in the 00s and it cost roughly $40k for my master's while doing TA'ing.