One concern that I think is pervasive across the country is about access to graduate studies, and access for disadvantaged students who are under-represented. This includes students with disabilities. It includes indigenous students, first nations students, and a whole host of things in between. Part of the challenge, of course, is that graduate studies are primarily full time, 12 months of the year. Many of the scholarships that are awarded also require full-time study, which is not always practical. They also require you to be on campus. If you're doing your research, you need direct access to the labs and libraries, which may not always be feasible for people who need to be in their communities and what have you.
We really need more flexible options and more flexible eligibility criteria for scholarship holders in order to best accommodate the nature of their day-to-day lives as well. There has to be some balance so that it's not just all about school. They have to live their lives in addition to that.
So that's what we're asking for—a re-evaluation and reconsideration of some of the policies and practices that are currently in place, with many of the scholarship programs that are currently available; and targeted scholarship programs as we better recognize and understand some of the challenges that prospective students have.
With respect to your question on the value of the international student exchange, there are a number of reasons why bringing international students into our programs is so important. There's the diversity of perspective they bring and the different experiences they bring. As well, many of the issues we're grappling with from the research side are extremely complex. They're not unique to Canada. They're not unique to a particular region. They're very global. There are cultural differences and policy differences that vary across the world. When we're looking for solutions, ideally we want a solution that will be quite transportable beyond our own boundaries. That's one of the elements of the value of having the diversity of perspective.
It's also important for our Canadian students to get out to different parts of the world. It's cultural education. It's learning to be a global citizen. It's learning that things are done differently. We find that in many cases it's very challenging to get domestic students to go abroad. Whenever students do go abroad, when they come back their eyes have been opened. They see how there are a lot of similarities but the differences are really important. It helps them in their further studies, because they incorporate that global perspective as they explore whatever their field of study is. As they pursue their research, they want it to be representative and generalizable to a global community, as distinct from something that's literally very regionally focused .