Chinese immigrants Canada 's brain gain

98.3% attend post-secondary

Joanne Laucius,  Canwest News Service

An astonishing 88.3% of young Chinese immigrants in Canada go to university -- more than double the figure for young Canadians as a whole, according to a new study.

When community college was added to the mix, 98.3% of young Chinese immigrants sought post-secondary education by the time they were 21 years old.

Ross Finnie, an economist at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa , expected the figure to be high. But this was astounding, he said.

"These numbers are so high, they don't even seem possible," said Mr. Finnie, who crunched the numbers from Canada 's sweeping Youth in Transition Survey with coauthor Richard Mueller at the University of Lethbridge .


Arthur Sweetman, an economist at Queen's University who has done extensive research on immigrant education and labour force participation, calls them "Generation 1.5" -- immigrants who came to Canada as children and spend at least some years in the Canadian school system.

Generation 1.5 has been thriving in Canada , despite figures that have suggested for the past 20 years that their parents have suffered in the quest for prosperity, said Mr. Sweetman.

"Many immigrants come here for the kids. The kids understand that and they work for it."

The numbers suggest not just a brain gain for Canada , but the foundation of an entrepreneurial class with schooling in Canada and one foot in another culture.

Immigrant hustle is nothing new. But the China effect continues into the first generation born in Canada , with 81.3% going to university and 13.6% going to college, Messrs. Finnie and Mueller found.

The China effect was the strongest in the study, but it wasn't the only one. Firstand second-generation immigrants from many parts of the world were more likely to seek post-secondary education than those born in Canada . (In the study, second-generation immigrant refers to a child born in Canada of immigrant parents.)

Just less than 38% of nonimmigrant youth went to university compared to 57% of all first-generation immigrants and 54.3% of second-generation immigrants, said Mr. Finnie, who mined the data from the survey, which asked in-depth questions of 26,000 Canadian young people who were 15 in 1999.

The survey, which is following that same group as they grow up, has some of the richest data in the world, ranging from youth study habits to perceptions of their own self-esteem and the social support they get from family and friends.

The immigrant effect was obvious in youth from a number of regions. More than 90% of immigrants from Asian countries other than China (including India and the Middle East ) as well as those from African nations went to university or college.