Vietnamese students in Canada grow fastest among foreign peers: report

Vietnamese students in Canada grew 89 percent in 2017, making them the fastest growing market for international education in the country, a new report showed.

Student from Vietnam in the North American country amounted to nearly 15,000 last year, a nearly triple increase from 2015, according figures from the Immigration Refugees and Citizenship Canada, as cited by the Canadian Bureau for International Education.

They now account for 3 percent of international students in Canada, ranking fifth following China (28 percent), India (25 percent), South Korea (5 percent), France (4 percent), and are as big as the group from the United States.

As of the end of 2017, Canada had 495,525 international students, up 20 percent from the previous year, the bureau said. Students from India grew 63 percent and Iran 45 percent.

“Our research shows that international students choose Canada because of the quality of the Canadian education system and our reputation as a safe and tolerant country,” Karen McBride, President and CEO of the education bureau, said in an online statement last week.

There were around 130,000 Vietnamese studying abroad at all levels in 2017, and their top five destinations are Japan, the U.S., Australia, China and the U.K., according to government data.