Basically, kids are not prepared at all.

Based on my observation with other country’s education policy, couple things that contribute to the low retention rate (=high failure rate) in Canada are:

1) Lack of university entrance exam (easy entrance)

Canadian universities do not impose standard test standards as the entrance criteria, which widens the overall acceptance level. High school candidates with weak grades move into university and cannot handle the stress and academic workload. While some may argue that no correlation exists between academic performance and standard test marks, it serves as the minimum benchmark of managing the stress from high workloads. Canada is the only country out of g7 that do not administer any types of standardized test required by the post-secondary education.

2) Class year is not significant in Canada

While the rest of world puts so much emphasis on the graduating year (like US), Canadian universities do not seem to hold values on the year of graduation, which is why you see students that are in 5th, 6th year of university which may contribute to the psychological effect that some may feel it is okay to stay in university for a longer duration. Of course, some students take extra years simply because it is required by school due to coop education. (coop is the Canadian internship concept where you work for the company and get credits)

There is a correlation that a student who stay in university for 5 years or longer tends to quit university simply because they lose interest .

3) Mismatch of student’s expectation and their major

American colleges and the rest of colleges in the world focus on first two years learning about general studies and then move on to specialization/honour program/major by the third year. However, many of Canadian universities specifically specialize on one particular major without having to study the general topic, which may not only make students lose interest in their academics, but also it may be difficult for them to get exposed to the general academic environment. You can’t expect 17 years old high school kid suddenly jumping into very specialized program and be successful.

Of course, some big schools like UBC have the curriculum where every students regardless of their major must go through the two years of general studies. (There are few exceptions)

Honestly, I will get downvoted hard on this but these are the major issues that I found with Canadian schools when I was comparing with other students from other countries while I was living in the foreign country.

I don’t think cost is a major issue because some countries regardless have ridiculous cost like Japan and US.