Steep drop in overseas students leaves universities reeling

A higher-than-expected decline in international students in Canada, whose tuition and fees have buoyed university and college bottom lines for years, has pitched many colleges and universities into deficit and caused layoffs and the closure of programmes across the country.

Over the first six months of this year, Canada issued 36,417 international student visas, 90,000 fewer than a year earlier and almost a quarter of a million fewer than between January and June 2023.

The plummeting numbers are even greater than were planned when, in response to a housing affordability crisis that was seen as being exacerbated by the more than 1 million international students in the country, the federal government announced a cut of 35% in international visa targets and last year when the federal government announced a further 10% cut this year and one to take effect next year.

The rate of decline is even greater than the rate identified in January by the Waterloo, Ontario, Canada-based online information and application portal ApplyBoard. In that report, ApplyBoard noted that in 2024, the decline in issuance of international visas was 45%, with declines in visas issued for Canada’s colleges being 79%.

The rate of decline is also several times greater than the 35% drop in interest in studying in Canada that Studyportals, the Netherlands-based post-secondary information hub, reported to University World News a year ago – when students who would have applied to come to Canada early this year were starting their search.

At the time, Studyportals’ co-founder and CEO Edwin van Rest said: “The impact of Canada’s policy changes, processing delays, and overall narrative surrounding international students is unmistakable: students are voting with their feet – or, more accurately, their brains.”

Van Rest correctly predicted: “The sector is going to feel a far greater hit than the student visa cap was intended to cause. Even segments of the market, such as masters and PhD students, which were beyond the scope of the policy’s original target, are facing consequences.”

In fact, according to up-to-date data on searches for information about studying in Canada provided by Studyportals to University World News, the decline in interest in even applying to Canada is likely to continue. Year over year, there has been a 42% decline in the number of searches about Canada.

“It’s the largest decrease we’ve seen for any major receiving country. Of particular note, enquiries about Canadian programmes from India decreased 56% over the past 12 months as compared to the 12 months prior. Enquiries from Nigeria about Canadian programmes decreased 49% over the same period,” said Andrew Ness, Studyportals’ senior vice-president for analytics and consulting for North America.

Fewer applicants, visa delays

While Canada’s immigration department, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), reduced the number of visas it would approve, there are a number of other reasons for the drastic drop in the number of visas approved. First, the number of applicants has declined.

Between January and June 2023, IRCC received more than 575,000 applications; over the same period in 2024, the number had already dropped by more than 175,000 to 398,675. In the first half of this year, the number of applications fell again by almost 100,000, to 302,795.

In January, ApplyBoard reported that the approval rate for 2024 had fallen by 45%. In the first half of this year, that rate fell almost 30 percentage points to 71%.

Additionally, delays in processing student visas have increased. In the case of study permit extension, the delay is 173 days. Processing times from China, according to the IRCC website, are five weeks, and from the UK, 10 weeks.

Last week, Vakkas Bilsin, a Toronto lawyer, filed a class action case for 25 Chinese students who had a letter from their prospective university saying that they had a place for these students as well as housing – and who had proved they had the requisite CA$20,000 (US$14,400) available for expenses – but had not yet had their applications processed.

“At the end of the day, we’re not asking for a positive decision. We just want them to make a decision on the study permit applications,” Bilsin said in a video interview on CTVNews.ca.

David Robinson, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, confirmed that his organisation had seen a reduction in international students that goes far beyond the cap set by the government.

“This is because of a number of factors, including changes to the work visa element of the international student visa as well as the tarnishing of Canada’s reputation globally as a destination. Accordingly, we are seeing fewer applications, and there have also been long delays in the visa application process because of understaffing at IRCC,” said Robinson.

Though speaking for himself and not Concordia University (Montréal, Quebec), where he is chief financial officer, Denis Cossette told University World News that the international situation with China and India, whose students make up the largest contingent of international students in Canada, has been particularly tense over the last few years and that this has impacted international student applications.

Further, changes in government policies (including several in Québec, such as the new requirement that international students demonstrate proficiency in French to graduate) have created a negative “general message circulating across the world: that students are not welcome in Canada”.

As reported on 30 August by the CBC, year over year, in April 2025, international applications to Québec’s universities were down 46%, with the province’s most prestigious university, McGill, experiencing a decline of 22% and both Concordia and Université de Montréal reporting declines of 37%.

Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, a regional university with an enrolment of 14,000, has experienced a decline in international student applications of over 50%, or over 1,500 students, approximately 10% of the university’s total enrolment.

As the Canadian Broadcasting Company reported on 6 September, the University of Regina (Saskatchewan) is facing what its president, the noted military historian Jeff Keshen, calls a “needless” CA$10 million shortfall because of IRCC’s failure to process visas expeditiously.

“You’ve seen the consequences of this across Canada, where university budgets have been absolutely decimated by what’s going on with the federal government.

“So, I would say, yes, this international student situation must straighten itself out, because the consequences for post-secondary, we’re going to be able to handle it moving forward, but it will become more and more significant and will become more and more severe if the status quo remains,” Keshen told local media.

Chronic underfunding

While final figures will not be available until late next month, increased enrolment of domestic students has filled college and university seats, Robinson confirmed to University World News.

However, he quickly added: “This doesn’t make up for the drop in international students, particularly in those smaller regional universities that were really dependent upon international student revenues.”

Canada’s regional universities and colleges – especially those in Ontario – are especially threatened by the loss of international students even if domestic students provide what admissions officers refer to as “bums in the seats”.

The reason for this, as reported by University World News, is that provincial governments have either frozen their grants to colleges and universities or have not increased them to keep pace with inflation.

Upon taking power almost a decade ago in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford, whose knowledge and appreciation of post-secondary education may be doubted given that he is a college dropout, did not increase grants to keep pace with inflation but, in a populist move, reduced tuition by 10% and has kept it frozen.

According to a study covered by The Local, by 2023 and 2024, the combined freeze and slow-walked increase in grants added up to an almost billion-dollar decrease in education funding since Ford’s Conservative Party took office in Canada’s largest province.

Underfunding before Ford took office and by other provincial governments led to colleges and universities across the country looking to international tuition to add to their coffers.

In 2023, tuition revenue at McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario) rose by CA$8.4 million, or 1.9%, to CA$445.8 million, “solely due to increased international enrolment and international tuition rate increases”, said its financial reports; tuition for international students and their fees are set by the institution and not capped by the province.

For the 2020 to 2021 academic year, the last year for which detailed data is available, international students contributed 68% of total tuition fees collected by Ontario’s colleges. At CA$1.7 billion, these students contributed more to the college system than did the Ontario government.

Last October, David Agnew, president of Seneca Polytechnic, laid the closing of one campus directly at the feet of the (then) 50% drop in international students. “It’s basically because we are losing international students,” he told CBC News.

At Cape Breton University in Sydney, Nova Scotia, the region’s smallest university, 75% of the university’s students are international students, which means their loss is likely to be keenly felt.

In July, the Ontario Public Service Employees Union reported that almost 10,000 college professors and other employees had been laid off in the province as 600 programmes had been either cancelled or suspended.

Last February, Algonquin College in Ottawa (where this writer taught for 30 years) announced the closure of 41 programmes (16% of its programmes) and of one rural campus.

“This whole financial mess has exposed a long-standing fundamental problem in Canada,” said Robinson, “and that is governments at the provincial level thought they could fund education on the cheap by cutting funding and having institutions enrol international students.

“Now that that tap has been turned off, we’re seeing that the fundamental problem has always been a serious public underinvestment in post-secondary education in Canada,” he said.

Closure of departments

The financial strain on Canadian universities because of the drop in international students has caused a number to announce the closure of departments hitherto considered essential to the definition of a university, said Robinson.

In February, for example, York University (Toronto) announced through the media that it was suspending 18 programmes, including classics, Hellenic studies, Indigenous studies, Jewish studies, gender and women’s studies, German studies and environmental biology.

“We are seeing a cutback in programmes that raises questions about the purpose of a university. We have increasing domestic student enrolment, but fewer programmes being offered,” Robinson told University World News.