It's a well-established fact university students love their beer.
What's not widely known is the role the boss of a Prince George brewery has played in opening a student-exchange pipeline between UNBC and a privately-owned university in Japan.
Kazuko Komatsu, president and CEO of the Pacific Western Brewery, is a graduate of Gakushin University in Tokyo and her connections resulted in a partnership with UNBC that annually brings between 150 and 200 Japanese students to Prince George. Some students stay for the full school year and some are here for month-long visits. Many of them stay with Prince George families as part of the home-stay program.
"It's only because of Kazuko Komatsu, who introduced us to them about seven years ago, that we have this wonderful relationship," said UNBC president George Iwama.
Gakushin, which includes as alumni students, Yoko Ono and Emperor Hirohito, was originally set up to educate people with ties to the Japanese aristocracy, but now is open to all segments of society.
Iwama visited Japan and talked to the president of Gakushin and asked her why they like to send students to UNBC when they could be choosing larger, more-established universities.
"Some of them are very privileged students and can go anywhere, but she said when they send them to Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal, they just find other Japanese students, go shopping with them and come back no different," said Iwama. "When they go to Prince George, they get homestays, they lose their wallets, they get lost on the bus and find their way home. Through those trials, in a safe and small community, they come back transformed."
Iwama said Gakushin wants UNBC to increase its capacity to allow more Japanese students to come to Canada. UNBC has just begun a new program using high-definition video-conferencing equipment to allow instructors in Prince George to teach English to students at the Tokyo campus.
"Because we have four or five hours of overlap we can teach and they receive, but we made it clear we would like their Japanese teachers to teach us language and culture coming the other way," said Iwama. "In addition to the real bodies going back and forth, that's one way to start internationalizing. If we could replicate that in a few schools, in a handful of countries, that's what we want."
Full-time international students pay three times as much for tuition as domestic students, averaging approximately $17,000 for two semesters. When compared to elite U.S. colleges, which charge $50,000 per year, UNBC seems a bargain to some international families.
"While we appreciate their tuition contributions, the multiplier effect in our city and region is four to one," said Iwama. "For every dollar we bring in on tuition, they're spending four dollars in the city whether they're buying clothes, gas or going to the movies.
"The cash aspect is important, but we want to internationalize our campus for all the right reasons. We have to stay true to the values of excellence and looking at UNBC's future and what role we can play as a university for the North. We want our graduates to have been exposed to different languages and cultures and make friends from other countries, so as they graduate [from] UNBC they locate in northern B.C."
Iwama said countries like China, India and Brazil are investing in millions of dollars worth of scholarships to allow students to study at Canadian universities. He said word of mouth is helping to sell UNBC abroad.
"As you graduate international students [from] certain countries, they go back, tell a good tale about us, and some are more passionate about it, blogging and texting good news," said Iwama. "We have a particularly enthusiastic champion in Saudi Arabia who is doing wonders for our numbers."
