The Competition to Add Students Borders on War at These Colleges

The University of Windsor, tucked next to the Ambassador Bridge on the Canadian side of the Detroit River, started the battle.

First, the school ran a cheeky set of ads in Detroit newspapers declaring, “You can study here and be home for dinner.”

Next, it introduced the “NAFTA special,” and, in the spirit of the barrier-smashing accord, slashed its $12,000 foreign student tuition rate to a bargain $3,800 for Americans. Of course, it didn’t hurt that the exchange rate is decidedly in favor of the U.S. dollar, with a Canadian dollar worth about 67 U.S. cents.

This once-sleepy university of 10,000 students, like other Canadian colleges big and small, is on a drive to recruit U.S. students and their parents’ checkbooks. Eager to stem declining enrollments, and recently freed by government deregulation to set their own tuition rates, Canadian schools are not just cutting fees, they’re touring college fairs, schmoozing with guidance counselors and engaging in that most dreadful of American practices: self-promotion.

But the Americans may beat them at their own game.

“I will be forever grateful to the University of Windsor for running those full-page ads,” said Mike Wood, interim director of admissions at Wayne State University in Detroit.

For years, he and others had pushed the idea of a price cut for Canadian students. When Wayne State’s new president, Irvin Reid, saw the ads, he agreed on the spot to a “friendly neighbor” deal, carving tuition for Ontario residents from $3,800 to $1,800 per semester.

‘Canadian Ivy League’ Visits U.S. College Fairs

The score has been lopsided in favor of U.S. schools for years, which already had 24,000 Canadian students in 1994-95, the latest year for which figures are available. Canadian schools have been making steady gains, however, issuing 2,917 visas to U.S. students in 1997-98, the highest number since 1982.

McGill University in Montreal, the University of Toronto and Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, have formed the deliberately pretentious “Canadian Ivy League” for promotional trips to U.S. college fairs.

The University of Guelph, also in Ontario, sent 50,000 students in 11 U.S. states a brochure that said, “So you think you know Canada, eh?” with a photograph of a student in a heavy fur-lined parka. “We’re here to tell you there’s more to Canada than ice fishing, winter woolens and Royal Canadian Mounties! At Canada’s University of Guelph, you can be part of a world-class international learning experience . . . at a cost that will astonish you.”

But nowhere are the front lines closer than at the University of Windsor and Wayne State, minutes apart on either side of the Detroit River.

Windsor, a short bridge or tunnel ride to Detroit and within easy reach of fresh crops of graduating high schoolers across the Midwest, has learned the arts of direct mail and catchy advertising.

“What’s that test? The SAT? You can actually buy that list of students’ names and home addresses,” Windsor spokesman John Carrington said in amazement. The school bought 1,400 names from northern Ohio, Michigan and Indiana this year and mailed brochures with a photograph of a smiling female student below the caption: “Study abroad . . . close to home.”

The Inducement of Athletic Scholarships

Meanwhile, back in the Motor City, Wayne State is pulling out all the stops. Officials there have hired a popular retired Windsor guidance counselor, Larry Luvisotto, to extol Wayne State’s virtues to former colleagues, who have the ears of students and their parents. And they’ve unveiled the ultimate American inducement: sports scholarships.

“There’s not an athletic scholarship anywhere in the entire country of Canada,” Wood crowed. “They’re not allowed to have them.”

“That’s true,” Carrington conceded. “But the Pistons did use our gym to train when they were champions.”

Wayne State’s Luvisotto has already recruited six of Ontario’s best high school football players, and the school is starting a new NCAA Division 1 hockey team.

“The hockey coach is scouring Ontario schools right now,” Wood said.

Windsor and other Canadian schools aren’t so, well, bold. But they’re learning. Without pointing fingers anywhere in particular, Carrington notes that the University of Windsor offers a “safe, clean and friendly environment.”

But some Canadian students at Wayne State say they were pleasantly surprised that the stereotypes about urban blight aren’t true.

“Everybody says Detroit is terrible, but there are lots of nice things here: the Detroit Institute of Art, all the college buildings, the shopping malls,” said Amirose de Guzman, a freshman from Windsor. “And I have the luxury of going home and letting Mommy cook dinner.”

Lionel Douglas, 48, of Windsor is working toward a doctorate in education. He says that, as a black immigrant from Trinidad, he feels more comfortable in Detroit than in Canada.

Not everyone agrees. Diversity is much more routine in Windsor, Asian students say.

“Here it’s basically, match your color type to the right table at lunch,” said Nita Massey, a 21-year-old Wayne State student from Windsor.

Massey said big-city crime is a problem--her brand-new purple Eagle Vision was stolen from a campus garage the first day of school. Still, with the chance to get a dual degree in criminal justice and political science in five years--options not available at the smaller University of Windsor, she’s sticking it out.

In Canada, U.S. students find themselves challenged about everything from America’s permissive gun laws to President Clinton’s sex life. John Corlett, Windsor’s dean of students, said: “They learn they have to be models for an entire nation. That can be hard on an 18-year-old freshman.”

During a discussion of Monica S. Lewinsky’s book in a communications class lecture at Windsor, freshman Quinn Stanto of Grosse Ile, Mich., said: “My professor asked who was from the States, and I was the only one who raised my hand in a class of 400. . . . I was basically, like, men and women fool around every day, I don’t care.”

But Stanto said she loves studying in Canada.

“They’re so friendly here,” she said. “In my opinion, it will help me on my resume to have international experience.”

Her father, a truck driver who earns 40 cents a mile for the 3,000 miles he logs each week, loves the Canadian experience too.

“I wrote them checks totaling $8,000 last year,” he said. “They sent me a $2,200 refund!”

The lopsided Canadian-American dollar exchange rate has definitely put American parents in the driver’s seat for now.

So who’s winning the battle, the Canadians or the Americans?

Windsor enrolled 30 U.S. students in 1998-99, up from none the year before, and it expects that number to more than double for the fall. But Wayne State added 47 during second semester alone, most of them from right across the river. And the school, which is more than triple the size of Windsor, had a head start of nearly 500 Canadian students already.

Officials at the smaller school say they are content. The NAFTA special may even be extended to Mexico. Meanwhile, Midwest recruitment efforts are going well.

“They love us in Toledo,” Carrington said.