Groups call for Ottawa to revise cap on enrollment by international students
A couple of groups representing universities, colleges and institutes in Canada are calling on the federal government to pivot from its cap on the intake of international students put in place earlier this year.
The cap will cut the number of international students enrolling in Canadians institutions by about half, said both Universities Canada and Colleges and Institutes Canada.
“It’s quite clear that there’s been a very significant and substantial decrease in enrolment across the country,” Michael McDonald, director of government relations for Colleges and Institutes Canada, told Global News.
How will the international student cap affect Canada?
McDonald group anticipates a 54% decline in the number of international students enrolling in learning institutions in Canada.
As a result, there will be a lower amount of funding for colleges and institutes to utilize for equipment and trainers at the various schools, he said.
“So welders need benches, nurses need facilities that are critical to be able to train those roles, and that takes space and those are expensive,” McDonald said in the Global News report.
“International students at their core, when they were coming into the country made programs viable and they made the ability to host another cohort.”
Uncertainty for international students
Part of the issue is that the cap created uncertainty for many international students when applying for schools, and that may sway them away from Canada especially if universities from other countries come to them with offers, said McDonald in the report.
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In January, the federal government put a cap on roughly 360,000 approved international student applications for 2024, a decrease of 35 per cent from 2023. That number has since been revised with about 292,000 approved permits anticipated, according to Global News.
Meanwhile, Universities Canada expects at least a 45 per cent drop of international students. The final tally will be reported in October.
“There’s every possibility that it’s going to be even worse than we fear,” he said in an interview Saturday. “But it’s important to note that we’re already in territory that no one anticipated and that needs to set off a big alarm bell in Ottawa that we need to start turning this around right away.
Ottawa will re-assess the number of new study permit applications by the end of this year to come up with the cap for 2025.
Ottawa allows international students to work up to 24 hours per week.