Universities struggle to keep up with constant international student policy changes

Canada's education brand is at risk as enrolment takes a dive.

September 11, 2024
Illustrations de Katrin Emery. Pour en savoir plus sur son travail, consultez le site www.katrin.ca.

Overseas education fairs are typically busy places for recruiters and trade officials to get the message out about the many benefits of studying in Canada. But the last year has been one like no other, and the stories from the recruitment frontlines are very different. Canada, it seems, is missing in action.

“What we’re seeing are empty booths,” Nikki Macdonald, president of the B.C. Association of Institutions and Universities said in mid-June. Her association’s members have been asked by student recruiters, “where is Canada?”, while traffic to their own booths at those fairs has also declined. “Instead of having 40 people show up, they’re seeing 10,” said Dr. Macdonald.

Whether a similar scenario plays out on Canadian university campuses this fall is an open question. Solid figures likely won’t be available until October, when universities have confirmed enrolment numbers. An intermittent stream of changes from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) that started in October 2023, designed to rein in what was seen as out-of-control international student recruitment, has left many universities unsure about what to expect. The changes include the first ever cap on study permit applications in 2024 and 2025 – announced during the busiest time for student recruitment – with universities bracing for tough financial decisions.

“We’re in a constant state of flux. We continue to see policy changes; every few weeks, every few days a new announcement, a new consultation, a new layer of consideration.”

There may be “significant drops in the numbers of students coming,” says Julia Scott, vice-president, member services for Universities Canada (University Affairs’ publisher), based on a membership survey the organization conducted in May. “We now find ourselves, and I speak on behalf of our institutions, in a really challenging place where students have chosen to go elsewhere.” IRCC’s data seems to back that up, with a steep plunge in processed study permit applications from March on compared to 2023. For example, June’s numbers were cut by more than half from the previous year.

It’s not just the changes themselves that have left the sector reeling. Administrators and others involved in international education complain the new policies roll-out has been haphazard, cumbersome to implement, and poorly communicated – even, they say, to Canadian trade commissioners overseas whose job includes promoting EduCanada.

It has left education leaders deeply frustrated by what they say is a blunt force, under-coordinated and ill-timed host of changes that have unfairly impacted all institutions, regardless of their past record with international students, and, worse, tarnished Canada’s once gleaming education brand internationally.

“We’re in a state of constant flux,” says Larissa Bezo, president and CEO of the Canadian Bureau for International Education (CBIE). “We continue to see policy changes; every few weeks, every few days a new announcement, a new consultation, a new layer of consideration.”

The net effect is that the global news on Canada is negative, whether accurate or not. “What people are hearing around the world is: Canada is not open for business,” says Steve Orsini, president and CEO of the Council of Ontario Universities (COU), which had plans to survey its members in September about the impact they’re seeing.

Declining enrolment

Even before Immigration Minister Marc Miller got going with his reforms, the Canada brand was already being pummeled in a high-value education market. In September 2023, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused the Indian government of involvement in the shooting death of Canadian Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar. The blowback was swift, with the Indian government issuing a travel advisory warning its students in Canada – Indian nationals represent Canada’s largest source of international students – to “exercise extreme caution and remain vigilant” due to a “deteriorating security environment.” IRCC data indicates that study permit applications from India had already been declining in 2023 but there was a marked drop from September on, including more than a 60 per cent decline in December alone.

The negative publicity became “highly problematic” for British Columbia’s University of the Fraser Valley, says James Mandigo, its provost and vice-president, academic. Administrators scrambled to reassure students enrolled at its Chandigarh, India campus who do the first two years of their undergraduate degrees in India and the last two in Canada. “It was important that they recognize that Canada is still very safe, you’re welcome in our communities [and] you will be well-supported when you come here,” says Dr. Mandigo.

Nevertheless, international applications to UFV’s regular programs in B.C. were down for this fall, Dr. Mandigo said, and “drastically down,” by 65 per cent for the 2025 winter term as of early July. On the opposite coast, new international registrations at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, N.S. were down by nearly half compared to early July 2023, although there was hope the number might improve. Given that international students pay nearly three times as much as domestic students and typically represent about 30 per cent of SMU’s enrolment, “that’s a significant amount of money,” said Robert Summerby-Murray, the university’s president. Set against a $142-million operating budget for 2024-2025, “in our case, it’s probably approximately $7 million.”

A financial impact was also expected at Cape Breton University, which had already been planning to bring international enrolment down from 75 per cent of its 9,100 total enrolment in 2023 to 60 per cent of a 7,000-strong student body by 2027. It is unclear how much of a financial impact this would have on the institution, with a $132-million operating budget for this year, but “it could be anywhere from $4 million, upward,” says Becky Chisholm, CBU’s associate vice-president, enrolment management and student experience. While IRCC’s policy changes “were well intended,” they could have been implemented differently, she says, and “created a lot of disruption and confusion in the market.” Applications have slowed and the university reported in late July that it had only used about 25 per cent of its nearly 7,100 study permit application allotment for 2024, controlled through the issue of “provincial attestation letters” or PALs, whose distribution is decided by provincial governments. That figure, however, was slightly better than a report at the same time by Canadian Press that Nova Scotia had only used 4,000 of its roughly 20,000 PALs.

“I think they know who the bad actors are in the sector. You’d have a hard time finding any public institutions on that list.”

While it’s too soon to know the reforms’ impact on programs, an early (and perhaps temporary) casualty in some cases has been one-year student exchange programs where a Canadian university exchanges its students with those from a partner foreign university. International exchange students in programs longer than six months require study permits. The University of Waterloo cancelled its one-year program for the current academic year, worried about conserving its limited study permit application allotment under the cap for international students committing to full degree programs.

Course correction

There’s been little argument that things needed to change, given mounting stories of a compromised international student system, including fraudulent acceptance letters, affordable housing shortages and scams, and students desperate for jobs and even food. The livelier conversation has been around what needs to change and how. Universities have argued that they weren’t the cause of things spinning out of control and have managed their international student recruitment and growth responsibly.

“We were collateral damage, unfortunately,” says COU’s Mr. Orsini, pointing to “other sectors of postsecondary education” that “ballooned” their international student enrolments.

Minister Miller acknowledged when announcing the study permit cap last January that his reforms were “blunt measures,” and that “we need to work with provinces to make sure they’re doing their jobs” in managing education. But Dr. Mandigo at UFV is not sympathetic, calling the immigration department’s approach “so unfortunate. I think they know who the bad actors are in the sector. You’d have a hard time finding any public institutions on that list.”

Canada’s current international education strategy, developed by Global Affairs Canada, expires this year, but has promoted diversification of source countries for international students, away from heavy hitters such as India and China and towards places like Brazil, Colombia and Vietnam. However, that plan is at risk, observers say, as institutions play it safe with their now-restricted study permit allocations, mindful as well of the recent doubling of the personal funds requirement to more than $20,000 which may disadvantage students from lower-income countries. Instead, they are focusing on source countries where accepted students have proven likelier to receive a study permit and actually show up, a process called “conversion.”

“We’ve had to reorient elements of our recruitment and that has taken away from some of the directions the federal government had set,” says SMU’s Dr. Summerby-Murray, also chair of the Association of Atlantic Universities. “We’re not able to maintain that diversified approach. It means we have to return to a more traditional model with a higher likelihood of [student] financial stability and conversion.”

IRCC re-adjusted study permit allocations after complaints that initial limits were based on a national average conversion rate of 60 per cent, well above what it has been for some individual universities and provinces. Quebec, which has struggled against a high immigration department rejection rate of applicants from French-speaking African countries, ultimately received a higher allocation of applications under the federal cap than had been submitted by students previously. “We’re in the wait and see period,” said Annik Gélineau, registrar at Université de Montréal, in early July. “For the moment, enrolment may be good, but the real deal will be in September – will they come or not?” McGill University, one of two English language universities whose out-of-province fees have been subject this year to a Quebec government increase and redistribution policy, reported a 10 to 20 per cent drop in out-of-province applications, but attributed most of that to provincial versus federal changes.

Université Sainte-Anne in Pointe-de-l’Église, N.S. also draws many of its international students, who make up 30 per cent of its 500-student enrolment, from French-speaking African countries. Any downward pressures on their numbers threaten not only the university but the francophone minority communities in the province and beyond that look to francophone immigration to increase their populations, an effort even the provincial and federal governments have been on board with, says Rachelle LeBlanc, the university’s director of communications and recruiting. “These changes have been implemented nationally to solve regional challenges but without taking into consideration regional or linguistic realities,” she says. International recruitment to her university can be a three-year process so “when you introduce changes like this at the last minute, it can get a bit confusing … we’re planning for the worst and hoping for the best.”

Given the concern, l’Association des collèges et universités de la francophonie canadienne (ACUFC), which represents francophone postsecondary institutions outside of Quebec, made a complaint against IRCC under the Official Languages Act. It argued that IRCC should have taken into account the particular needs and realities of minority language communities in making its policy changes, and that it needed to instead implement “positive measures” to mitigate potential consequences. In mid-August ACUFC acknowledged that a newly-detailed IRCC pilot project to retain international francophone students in minority communities by making exceptions to their study permit eligibility and fast-tracking them to permanent residency “could have concrete local effects.”

More change to come

Even if Canada were to hit IRCC’s cap limit for this year (there has been some speculation that this might happen once already-announced changes are absorbed into the marketplace), it would be against a backdrop of ongoing global competition for these students. Other leading receiving countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom have faced similar problems with their international student programs and are also retrenching their policies. But there are emerging markets nipping at Canada’s heels too, such as Germany and China, says SMU economist Ather Akbari, who recently completed a report on international student experiences at Atlantic Canadian institutions. Even Kazakhstan has been developing partnerships with western universities to become an affordable regional student magnet. “The word is going around,” says Dr. Akbari, a former international student from Pakistan.

Skeptical about the evidence behind the need to undertake so many changes at once, Dr. Akbari warns that Canada “could lose students for no good reason,” a concern echoed by Ms. Scott. “The early impacts that we are seeing … indicate to us that the cap was actually enough to be able to deal with an issue that has been creeping up over a number of years.”

“There’s been little argument that things needed to change, given mounting stories of a compromised international student system, including fraudulent acceptance letters, affordable housing shortages and scams, and students desperate for jobs and even food.”

Partly for that reason, Universities Canada has pushed for a pause on further policy changes until institutions have a chance to adapt to the new requirements. CBIE has advocated for a “whole-of-government” approach to the sector federally and provincially, and there is a strong desire for better policy coordination and communication between IRCC and Global Affairs Canada, which promotes Canada’s education opportunities overseas as part of its trade portfolio. Global Affairs has been restructuring its international education department, including doing away with its executive director position, something that has further unsettled the sector. However, spokesperson Jean-Pierre Godbout wrote in an emailed statement to University Affairs that the changes are intended to “improve coordination and increase efficiencies,” while IRCC stated that it continues “to collaborate closely” on Global Affairs’ current international education strategy and is working towards its next iteration.

The sector is also awaiting news on changes to IRCC’s post-graduation work permit, including potentially tying eligibility to postsecondary programs aligned with deemed labour market needs. This has raised worries about further brand damage due to international students not wanting to commit to Canadian programs when they don’t know if they’ll lead to future Canadian work opportunities, as well as concerns about government meddling in and potentially miscalculating true labour market needs, which can vary region to region.

The launch of a promised “recognized institutions framework” has been delayed by IRCC until next year. It is supposed to be a set of criteria which will “reward” postsecondary institutions providing a superior level of international student service, including help with housing. While many universities continue to support that idea, there has been some pushback. Dr. Macdonald says B.C. could instead use its existing education quality assurance system, a set of provincial government quality and consumer protection standards that institutions must meet or exceed to host international students.

In the meantime, there are more question marks, with IRCC writing in an email to University Affairs that the number of study permit applications it will accept in 2025 “will be reassessed at the end of this year.” It also did not rule out changes to the current exceptions made under the cap.

This “continual parade of possible changes” is a worry for universities, says Mr. Orsini, expressing frustration at a lack of real-time data from IRCC to help postsecondary institutions track what’s happening with study permit applications as those changes play out. He is also concerned about a potential loss of higher quality students who may have more options for where they study in the world. Based on the low uptake of PALs he’s heard about among Ontario universities, “we’re going to see fewer international students than the federal government had initially planned. So that means a loss of top talent for the country. It’s going to exacerbate the financial challenges that universities and colleges are facing.”

Given the negative messaging politically and in the media about international students, Dr. Mandigo says he understands why families might think twice about Canada. “If one of my children studied internationally, I don’t know if I would have sent them to Canada.” It all makes for difficult planning ahead for universities. And with decreasing public support for immigration, what may be a temporary cap now may not be in future, Dr. Mandigo believes. “The cap isn’t going anywhere,” he forecasts. “The cap is here to stay.”

Editor’s note: This is a developing story with more policy changes expected. Please visit universityaffairs.ca for the latest updates.

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