The impact of federal government changes to the international student program is starting to be felt at colleges across the country as they prepare for multimillion dollar revenue declines and deal with what they describe as a diminished national brand that’s hurting recruitment.
At Confederation College in Thunder Bay, the number of new international students who enrolled this fall was down 39 per cent compared to a year ago. The college’s president, Michelle Salo, said this is the start of what she called “a very challenging era” for colleges in Canada.
Confederation expects to lose millions in revenue, and that will mean an impact on the programs it can offer domestic students, she said. It has paused new hiring and put off a project to expand its training centre for trades. The college has run operating surpluses of about $12.5-million over the last two years, but that additional cushion will run out quickly, Ms. Salo said. She said by next year the financial consequences could be profound.
A decline in revenue will threaten the sustainability of programs that also serve domestic students, she said, including engineering fields, early childhood education and dental hygiene.
The federal government has announced a series of changes aimed at reducing the number of international students in Canada, including a 35-per-cent cut in the number of study permits it will issue this year and a further 10-per-cent reduction in 2025. It has said the cuts were needed to address pressure on housing and health care.
Last month the federal government also announced it will restrict eligibility for post-graduation work permits for college students, which will further dent demand from abroad for Canadian study programs. University students will be unaffected, but at the college level, only international students who complete programs in one of five broad categories will be able to get a work permit after graduating. Those categories are: agriculture and agri-food; health care; science and technology; trade; and transport.
In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this week, Colleges Ontario president Marketa Evans wrote that the government’s plan “appears to assume that only those with university credentials can contribute to Canada.”
“We believe that college graduates contribute just as significantly to Ontario’s prosperity as their university-educated peers,” Ms. Evans wrote.
She said the new work-permit rules will exclude programs such as early childhood education, which has more than 5,300 international students enrolled at Ontario colleges in a field that’s in high demand. She urged Mr. Trudeau to reconsider the list of work-permit-eligible programs.
In British Columbia, applications from international students for the January intake are down 60 to 90 per cent across the publicly funded college network, according to Colin Ewart, president of BC Colleges. He said cost-saving measures such as program closings and pauses to capital projects are anticipated but have not yet been announced.
“The loss of international student revenue will significantly impact program offerings available to domestic students,” Mr. Ewart said. “The sudden, unplanned reductions in international student enrolment have been drastic and are expected to create prolonged resource challenges.”
David Agnew, president of Seneca Polytechnic in Toronto, said his school has lost $35-million in international tuition revenue so far and applications for the winter term are down substantially. Last week, he announced he would temporarily close the school’s Markham campus and he has also paused a major capital project.
Seneca has run surpluses in recent years based on strong international enrolment, but demand has been hit badly by the series of changes announced by the federal government over the course of 2024. Mr. Agnew said the way policy has shifted in multiple announcements over several months has damaged the Canadian brand.
“Right now, it’s just not a good situation for us trying to recruit,” he said. “We’re seeing a whole bunch of prospective students saying, ‘Look, it’s too much uncertainty in Canada.’”
Mr. Agnew said that may not be the message the federal government intends to convey, but it’s how the message has been received in markets overseas.
Adding to the pressure on colleges is the sense that provincial government funding won’t, in the short term, make up the lost revenues. In Ontario, a government-appointed panel last year recommended allowing domestic tuition fees to rise to bolster the system’s financial stability, but the government has said it intends to keep a tuition freeze in place. The provincial government did provide a boost in institutional funding in 2024, but it was less than the panel recommended.
“The financial situation of the system is frankly precarious,” Mr. Agnew said.