Ontario colleges face biggest hit from foreign student cap

Only one Ontario university will see its international student intake shrink this year, while more than half of the province’s public colleges face a drop, under a plan announced on Wednesday 27 March by Premier Doug Ford’s government, writes Mike Crawley for CBC News.

Ontario’s plan comes two months after the federal immigration minister announced a national cap on study permits for international post-secondary students, amid complaints that an explosion in their numbers was driving up housing costs in cities across Canada. Some 240,000 international students were issued permits to attend post-secondary programmes in Ontario last year, and the federal cap will see that number drop by roughly half this year.

Ontario’s priorities for its smaller allotment will be programmes that train students for “in-demand jobs” in such fields as skilled trades, health, human resources, hospitality, child care and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), the Ford government said in a news release.
Full report on the CBC News site