Universities brace for more fallout after immigration U-turn

Nineteen months ago, Canada exalted in its population passing the 40 million mark. Last Thursday morning, 25 October, standing in front of a bank of Canadian flags and flanked by a number of his ministers, Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, addressed his government’s volte face on the country’s wide open immigration policies and a-million-international-student-visas-a-year policy.

Pushed by a housing affordability crisis, caused partly by the million new Canadians that had entered the country between June 2023 and June 2024, and the huge number of international students – with more than a million visas being issued in 2023 – as well as a rising unemployment rate, Trudeau’s government has swung the same axe at Canada’s overall immigration system that Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada Marc Miller used twice this year.

In January Miller reduced the number of international visas by 35% and a few weeks ago he announced two 10% cuts, one in each of the next two years.

Immigration rate cuts over the next two years will now lead to a 0.2% decline in Canada’s population by 2027.

In a clip posted on X just before 10am Eastern Time on 25 October, Trudeau criticised corporations for “abusing our temporary measures [temporary work permits, which can lead to permanent residency and] exploiting foreign workers while refusing to hire Canadians for a fair wage”.

Yet, the prime minister saved his harshest words for colleges and universities, and the provinces that – to make up for decades of underfunding and, in the case of Ontario, a populist-inspired half-decade-long tuition freeze – pushed colleges and universities to enrol tens of thousands of international students, whose tuition and fees are many times higher than those of domestic students, and who in some cases make up the majority of the students.

“Under the watch of provinces,” said the prime minister, “some colleges and universities are bringing in more international students than communities can accommodate, treating them as an expendable means to line their own pockets … Our international student cap is dealing with exploitative colleges and universities, but all institutions need to take it upon themselves to be more responsible.”

Trudeau left unsaid that his government was forcing colleges and universities to be more responsible by requiring them to issue letters attesting to the fact that the institution did, in fact, have a seat for the student as well as housing arrangements.

Community colleges

That same morning, the presidents of Ontario’s 28 community colleges, many of which offer BAs, received a letter from the province’s Minister of Colleges and Universities Nolan Quinn that partially lifted a ban on their international ventures.

As Marketa Evans, CEO of Colleges Ontario, told the Toronto Star: “These entrepreneurial initiatives help offset costs to ensure that college programmes stay open for Ontarians.”

The original ban blindsided both the colleges and experts such as Alex Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates. At the time, he explained to The PIE News: “Nine months ago, there was practically nothing Ontario colleges couldn’t do to raise money through internationalisation.”

In addition to recruiting tens of thousands of international students, mostly from India, internationalisation also included establishing campuses overseas.

Algonquin College in Ottawa, for example, has had campuses and-or run programmes in India, Montenegro, Saudi Arabia and presently runs a college in Al Jahura, Kuwait: Canadian College Kuwait-Algonquin.

In the memo announcing the ban in mid-August, then Minister of Colleges and Universities Jill Dunlop is reported to have said: “It is essential that colleges focus on their core mandate of delivering post-secondary education and training to meet the needs of Ontarians and support the economic and social development of their local communities.”

Quinn is allowing the colleges to continue low-risk activities that include curriculum development, student exchange programmes, research partnerships and government-funded projects. However, development of new branch campuses or satellite campuses in other countries is now forbidden.

Campus closures

Also on 25 October, David Agnew, Seneca Polytechnic’s president, announced the closing of another of its campuses, all of which are in the Toronto region, because of a drop of 50% in international students.

Established in 2020, the Seneca International Academy (SIA) in Markham, a Toronto suburb, had 5,000 students, approximately one-fifth of the total number of international students enrolled in Seneca in 2022-23. (The college’s 24,500 international students make up more than half of the college’s full-time enrolment of 39,800.)

On CBC News, Agnew was succinct about the reason for closing SIA. “It’s basically because we are losing international students,” he said.

The students who had attended SIA and the other small campus are being relocated to Seneca’s main Toronto campus.

Ontario medical school restrictions

The minister responsible for the other end of Ontario’s higher education systems, the province’s six medical schools, Minister of Health Sylvia Jones, also chose 25 October to make a major announcement concerning international students.

Starting next year, Ontario will be reserving 95% of the province’s 3,732 seats in medical school for Ontarians. The remaining 5% will be available first to students from elsewhere in Canada. Only if these seats are not filled, will Ontario’s medical schools be authorised to enrol international students.

At present, there are 11 international students enrolled in Ontario’s medical schools; the largest group, six, come from the United States. Three of the province’s six medical schools have no international students, with the University of Toronto and McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario) both having four.

The reason Jones gave for restricting the number of out of province students, which is now about 88%, is financial. “Ontario’s taxpayers are paying for those students to go to school,” she said, stating that tuition does not cover the full cost of a medical student’s education.

Jones was joined at the press conference by Doug Ford, the province’s Progressive Conservative Party premier, whose government is dealing with a severe doctor shortage: two million of the province’s population of 16 million do not have a personal doctor.

“We know that if you’re born in Ontario [and study medicine in Ontario], you’re more than likely to stay and practise in Ontario,” the premier is reported to have said.

Collateral damage

The drastic decline in the number of international students across Canada is costing colleges and universities hundreds of millions of dollars.

In a prepared statement, Steve Orsini, president and CEO of the Council of Ontario Universities (COU), recognised that the “federal government had to address the bad actors that recklessly increased international student enrolment without the necessary supports”.

But, he continued, the federal government’s cuts have “resulted in significant collateral damage to universities, which will have untold implications for years to come”.

Chief among the areas damaged are the universities’ finances. COU estimates that Ontario’s universities will lose more than CAD$300 million (US$215 million) this year and another CAD$600 million next year.

If anything, the situation is even worse in Atlantic Canada where, according to Peter Halpin, executive director of the Association of Atlantic Universities (AAU), international students represent 30% of students whereas the national average is 20%.

This academic year, the number of international students choosing to study in Atlantic Canada –Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador – declined by more than 10%, to 23,000.

The Economic Impacts of Canada’s International Student Cap in Atlantic Canada for 2024-25, a study prepared for the AAU by Sackville, Nova Scotia-based Gardner Pinfold Consultants, states that this decline translates into a CAD$163 million loss for the region, Canada’s poorest.

“This decline,” Halpin told University World News, “has a significant effect on institutional financial sustainability, but it’s also having a big effect on the region, economically, socially and culturally.”

He added: “In recent years international students have become a very important stream of new citizens through the Atlantic immigration programme, which is a federal programme [designed] to bolster the attraction and retention of new Canadians to Atlantic Canada,” which has an ageing and declining population.

International students are especially important to the region’s smallest university, Cape Breton University in Sydney, Nova Scotia, where more than 75% of the university’s students are international students.

There’s a context for this, Halpin explained, pointing to the region’s small and declining population.

“They have a strategy to ensure that the university continues to survive and prosper. They have courses and programmes that appeal to international students, particularly students from India. And they were very successful in achieving that strategy and continued to be.

“Now their enrolment has declined year over year because of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) department policies,” said Halpin.

Halpin ended the discussion by underscoring the positive effect international students have on the communities in which their universities are located. Some 85% work, many off-campus, which has the effect of internationalising cities like Halifax, Moncton, St John’s and Charlottetown.

“We have a hard-earned reputation internationally for high quality education, but also for very welcoming campuses and communities. That’s why we have a retention rate of 56% of international students who graduate; they stay here following graduation and successfully so,” he said.