Summary
The piece in our discussion is all about the cost of living and the impact of COVID-19 on the international students. The piece talks about the challenges that both the international students are facing in Canada and also the impact of Covid-19 on the Canadian economy and university colleges too.
The piece reveals that, with the outbreak of COVID-19, several challenges have been witnessed as explained below;
Loss of Jobs
There have been so many jobs lost due to the issues related to COVID-19. The latter has led to most students in Canada not being able to pay their tuition fees. The outbreak led to increased reduction in demand for labor (economic principle derived from the demand for a firm’s output) in firms and the students that were not laid off could not attend their work due to government policies to combat COVID-19 (Kaufman 2020). The latter led to a decrease in supply of labor (total number of hours workers are willing to work at a given wage rate).Government SpendingWith the imposition of the lockdown policies and students not being able to present themselves back to school, the students have not been able to pay the tuition fee hence the government has had to increase its expenditure to suffice the growing economy.
The international students contribute more than 60% of the total funding in universities in Canada (Brammer and Clark 2020). Failure for the universities to open will mean that the students will not pay any school fees. The government is therefore left with the burden of increasing its expenditure in order to fund for education programs in the country. The increased government expenditure can lead to growth in the short term and also inflation (increase in the price of goods and services that are used on daily basis). The increased government expenditure will also affect the supply side of the economy.
The increase in government expenditure can lead to increase in the amount of tax paid by international students in the long run. However, the increase in government expenditure can also lead to long term economic growth in Canada as shown in the diagram below; (Brammer and Clark 2020).Hard to Adapt to The Online ClassesWith the closure of universities and the introduction of online learning, the international students found it hard to cope with the online classes and problems do with lateness to attending online classes, late submission of assignments, absenteeism, failure to do assignments and increased level of cheating in exams came up. Parents have had to revisit the decision of adopting the online learning for their students or rethink otherwise apart from the online tuition (Brammer and Clark 2020). The students find it hard to cope with the online classes and most of them have opted to go for internships.
This discussion is a microeconomic story since it is dealing with several microeconomic factors including the demand and supply, product pricing, production and consumption (Brammer and Clark 2020). The story also deals with the choices different people are making and the factors that lead to them to making these decisions and how the decisions affect the goods market and how they affect demand and supply.