From Bedok Reservoir to Canada - My Experience with an Immigration College
A Myanmar software engineer's honest account of chasing safety, paying for promises, and discovering what happens when education becomes a transaction.
From Bedok Reservoir to Canada: My Experience with an Immigration College
Disclaimer: This is based solely on my personal experience. My intention is to inform and raise awareness among future international students who are considering immigration pathways through Canadian colleges.
About Me
I was born and raised in Burma (Myanmar). Over the years, I became a seasoned software engineer, wearing many hats across businesses ranging from startups to multinational companies in both Singapore and Myanmar.
In 2021, the political turmoil that plunged my country into a failed state forced me to leave. With the help of former colleagues from Singapore, I was able to secure a position that allowed me to provide for my family. For a while, I enjoyed working in Singapore, doing what I love.
However, in 2023, the military junta tightened its grip by invoking a conscription law, threatening to forcibly enlist the country’s youth into one of the most notorious armies in the nation’s history. I soon realized that Singapore was no longer a safe haven either, as the junta had the power to expire my passport at any time, effectively compelling me to return and serve.
The Journey West Begins
Pressed by the urgency of my passport’s validity, I began researching migration options through education pathways to countries such as the United States, Canada, Ireland, Finland, the United Kingdom, and Australia. As a family man working from 8 AM to 9 PM driven by my passion for engineering I had limited time to research and prepare.
After discussing the options with my wife, we decided that Canada was our best choice. Compared to the US and Australia, it seemed comparatively more accessible. But a big question loomed over us: How?
Through connections with peers, I was referred to an education representative affiliated with universities and colleges in Canada. They walked us through the available institutions, which were not well-known universities but rather what are sometimes called “immigration colleges.” After a couple of months of evaluation, I successfully enrolled in one of them.
The Unseen Pressure on International Students
Every international student carries the same silent burden: What do we do after graduation? Will we secure an internship? Will we land a job in our field of study?
For those who cannot confidently answer these questions, the response is often to disengage skipping classes or showing little interest in coursework. Others focus on securing a part-time blue-collar job with the hope of transitioning it into full-time employment after graduation. This is driven by the very real need to maintain employment as a pathway to permanent residency in Canada.
This is not wrong. These students have paid upwards of CAD $27,000 to come to Canada and build a better life. The path, however, has rarely matched their expectations. The Conservative Party of Canada has even blamed international students for taking jobs from young Canadians, suggesting that locals cannot secure positions in fast-food chains and similar establishments. I strongly disagree with that characterization.
International students do not come here for free. They come with ambition, financial sacrifice, and in many cases, education loans to repay back home. They are not stealing jobs they are simply trying to survive and build the quality of life they worked so hard and paid so much to pursue.
The Quality of Vetting Both Students and Institutions
There is an old proverb: “Easy come, easy go.” It reflects, perhaps too accurately, the quality of education at some of these institutions.
During my time there, I had the chance to speak with many of my classmates and hear their stories. Shockingly, a number of them enrolled in a postgraduate program in Full Stack Software Development did not know how to write a basic loop. It made me seriously question the institution’s admissions process: Is the vetting genuinely too lenient, or is the only real criterion being able to pay the $25,000 tuition fee? Come on, we are in post-graduate course.
The course curriculum itself was, to be fair, reasonably well-designed. What was missing was the quality of delivery and meaningful engagement between students and instructors. I encountered a few dedicated lecturers who clearly put tremendous effort into their teaching. Unfortunately, they appeared to be the minority. Many instructors seemed to treat the role as a part-time income source rather than a professional commitment.
This raises a deeper question: Does Canada’s Ministry of Education conduct adequate vetting of these institutions? Colleges of this nature exist across the country, and some are effectively exploiting international students who are paying tens of thousands of dollars for an education that fails to meet a meaningful standard.
Someone might say, “You get what you pay for what did you expect?” Perhaps. But this is not merely about individual expectations. It is about establishing a baseline standard of educational quality. There should be clear criteria that institutions must meet, as well as reasonable academic expectations for students. Without such standards, predatory institutions will continue to flourish, and vulnerable students will continue to be misled.
What saddens me most is that many of these students paid $25,000 from their personal savings, their parents’ funds, or borrowed money and some still have to send remittances back home while studying. They deserve far better than what they received.
The Rise of the AI God and the Hallucination of Learning
I personally use AI tools extensively vibe-coding, running experiments, exploring new ideas. But I use AI as a thinking partner, worker not a decision-maker. I cross-check my thoughts with it, challenge its outputs, and ultimately make the calls myself. Used this way, AI-assisted learning is genuinely game-changing; it can compress years of trial and error into meaningful, accelerated growth. I draw a firm boundary when it comes to AI particularly in validating my own understanding of things.
What I witnessed among some students, however, was something very different.
Rather than treating AI as a tool, they worshipped it like a god one that would dutifully complete their assignments, answer their exam questions, and carry them through their studies without requiring them to truly understand anything. The result was predictable: students who could produce outputs but could not explain them. Ask them to walk through their own work, and the confidence evaporated instantly.
This is what I call the hallucination of learning the illusion of knowledge without the substance beneath it. AI gave them the appearance of competence, but robbed them of the struggle that builds real understanding. Over time, that gap between what they appeared to know and what they actually knew bred either apathy or quiet insecurity. Some disengaged entirely. Others kept going through the motions, producing AI-generated work while growing increasingly disconnected from the craft they were supposedly studying.
The tool that should have elevated them had, in the wrong hands, hollowed them out instead.
Updates The university campus in our town will be shutting down in this Falls.
Disclaimer I used Claude to edit my grammatical errors to smoothen some sentences of this post and replace long dash with spaces.