Limit 'strikes appropriate balance so students have option to work without compromising academic outcomes,' says IRCC
For the fall, Ottawa intends to allow international students to work up to 24 hours per week.
“Working off campus helps international students gain work experience and offset some of their expenses. As international students arrive in Canada, we want them to be prepared for life here and have the support they need to succeed,” Marc Miller, minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship.
“However, first and foremost, people coming to Canada as students must be here to study, not work. We will continue working to protect the integrity of our student program.”
International students in Canada have previously called on the federal government to extend the rule allowing them to work more than 20 hours per week.
In making the recent change, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) looked at the needs of students, policies in other countries, as well as research that has shown that academic outcomes suffer the more a student works while studying, according to the federal government arm.
Recent studies conducted in the US and Canada have shown that there is a considerable decline in academic performance for students working more than 28 hours per week, and that working more than 24 hours per week increases the chances that a student will drop out of their program, according to IRCC.
Most countries that welcome international students set limits on the number of hours they may work while they study, IRCC noted. It said that Australia recently changed its policy to allow a student to work 48 hours every 2 weeks. Meanwhile, in the US, students must meet additional criteria before being permitted to work off campus at all.
The 24 hours per week limit “strikes the appropriate balance so students have the option to work without compromising academic outcomes,” said the immigration arm of the government.
Ottawa temporarily suspended the limit on international students' work hours to address labor shortages in 2023, with the policy slated to end on Dec. 31, 2023. IRCC, however, later extended the ban on working hours to April 30, 2024.