Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
No actually, you have to… you can go to do exams in London but I did some
correspondence courses here. And that way I can finish my degree much
faster.
So you did correspondence
?
Not quite correspondence. It's international education. You can take it there
[or] they have instructors here to teach us. I've found the instructors are good
and especially their English. He's a young guy, not a professor yet, he's a lec-
turer, he's a major in English literature at the university.
Not long after our interview, in autumn 2006, it was revealed that Kingston
College was misrepresenting its degrees and that the 'American University
in London' was an unaccredited entity occupying an office above a bet-
ting shop (Matas 2006). The London office was fined in Britain in 2006
for false claims to be a university. Kingston College had been offering
fictional undergraduate and Master's degrees from AUL to gullible for-
eign students from South and East Asia who were not qualified to enter
accredited institutions. But Byron missed this rocky shoal, was able to
ride the wave of his Canadian diploma and has parlayed it into a job in
Hong Kong paying five times as much as he had been earning at his
father's business in Richmond. There was a network - social capital - at
play as well: 'the boss of that company had some connection with my
father'. Byron's social circle in Hong Kong are the friends he made at
Kingston College: 'My best friends from my university life, they all moved
back there. We've got the same theory. We can be very proud of what we're
being paid and what we're doing'. Working 12 hour days, six days a week,
Byron doesn't have much time to see his friends, but is happy they are all
launched on their careers: 'In Canada I cannot make a living like I'm
making in Hong Kong'.
Where there is a market, suppliers of all stripes will lay out their wares,
not least in the lax regulatory culture of Canadian international educa-
tion. While Byron was fortunate, a year or two later when the fraud was
exposed, other students, desperate for a western degree to take home as a
valued credential promising comparative advantage in the job market,
were left with nothing but useless paper to show for an outlay of thou-
sands of dollars.
The Asian-Canadian Church: From Isolation to Integration
Education is not the only institutional nexus that focuses the attention of
immigrants from East Asia, broadening their local networks into civil soci-
ety and deepening a sense of rootedness. Affiliation with Christian churches
has become a significant part of the life of a majority of Korean immigrants
