Chantal YoonThe following is part of a series detailing the experiences of international students at the University of Alberta. Given that these students face separation from family, paying more than $20,000 in tuition per year, and uncertainty when it comes to rising tuition costs, we are sitting down with some of these individuals to talk about their experiences at the university.
While Afsin Ahamed knows that the University of Alberta is where he should be, it’s not where he wants to be.
Ahamed is a second-year international student from Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh and the country’s largest city. He came to Edmonton to study petroleum engineering, but quickly switched to focus on business pre-recquisites when he realized the engineering workload was too heavy.
“I saw that it was the best university for petroleum engineering in Canada back when I thought I wanted to be a petroleum engineer and then I got here and here we are,” he said. “Joke’s on me.”
Bangladesh doesn’t have many world-renowned universities, so Ahamed’s family thought his potential would be wasted there. Though an ambitious Ahamed came to Canada, the student now says he doesn’t care and wishes he could go to university in Bangladesh.
“I wanted a lot of things, I wanted to be the best,” he said. “Now I just want to be average, so I just want to go back home.”
Despite regretting leaving Bangladesh and his support system behind, Ahamed doesn’t have many of the complaints that might be typical of international students. For one, he’s found it surprisingly easy to make friends with Canadian students, which he attributes to his perfect fluency in English. He attended a school in Dhaka where students were taught under the British curriculum.
Ahamed added that he doesn’t feel like he sticks out or is discriminated against in Edmonton but he said that could change.
“Who knows, Drumpf’s president now,” Ahamed said.
Living in Lister Centre in first year Ahamed said he found other residents friendly and accepting. He now lives in HUB residence and while he said his unit is in okay condition, he knows his friends have problems with their apartments such as mice and ant infestations.
“The university doesn’t really seem to care about what international students want,” Ahamed said. “I know that HUB has a lot of international students, the conditions are really shitty.”
Ahamed estimates that his parents will end up paying $200,000 for his education including his living expenses and tuition. While he said he thinks it’s fair that the government subsidizes Canadian students’ tuition, he doesn’t like the amount his family has to spend on his education.
“It’s a taller mountain to climb when it comes to financials,” he said. “And if anything were to happen to me here I don’t have any family close by or anyone who would understand, so that’s hard.”
It takes Ahamed $1,500 and more than 30 hours to get home to Dhaka since there are so many transfers. One thing he misses from Bangladesh is the food.
“The food in Edmonton is the worst,” he explained. “The food back home is the best ever. Even if it’s not home-cooked it’s cheap. Here the food isn’t spicy enough for South Asian people, we like our spice.”
Ahamed did add that he likes Nando’s, but they have Nando’s in Bangladesh too. He also misses the lifestyle he has in Bangladesh. His family has lots of domestic help because the cost of labour is low.
“I miss my privileged life,” he said. “I learned how to cook an egg the other day, how to boil it. I didn’t know before.”
While he suspects Canadian students think that Bangladesh is full of poverty and religious extremism, Ahamed said that isn’t the case. There is a lot of poverty in Bangladesh, but not in the area Ahamed is from — and because it’s a secular country, he said people won’t stand for religious extremism.
“In terms of religious extremism, our people are very open-minded,” he said. “Here in Canada we don’t have holidays for Eid or Buddhist holidays or Hindu holidays, we just have Christian holidays. But in Bangladesh we have government holidays for every single religious occasion.”
Ahamed plans to return to Bangladesh after receiving his degree from the U of A because life there is easier for him. There, he says he can “work less and live better” since labour is super cheap and his parents have lots of connections.
Read more on international tuition: International undergrad tuition to increase by three per cent in 2017-18, grad programs to increase as well
