Foreign enrolment cut by more than half at Conestoga
College led the country last year with more than 30,000 study permit approvals, federal data shows
Conestoga College will cut its international enrolment by more than half compared to 2023, the school said in a statement on Thursday.
This comes after the provincial government announced its plans to introduce a 50 per cent international enrolment cap in Ontario, using a formula that won’t allow new international enrolment to exceed 55 per cent of first-year domestic enrolment from 2023 at any institution, outside of high-demand programs.
Conestoga has revealed its provincial allocation will more than halve the college’s international enrolment from 2023.
“Our allocation was set at less than 50 per cent of our current international enrolment. With this news, we will assess the enrolment and operational impacts and communicate more as details become available,” the college said in a statement.
The school said that despite the cut, it will continue with planned capital investments, including $110 million in Guelph, $70 million in Kitchener and $41 million in Waterloo.
Conestoga led the country in 2023 with more than 30,000 study permit approvals, federal data shows. With a cap set below 50 per cent of its 2023 numbers, it means Conestoga will be limited to fewer than 15,000 new international students in 2024.
The cap will likely result in tens of millions of dollars in lost tuition revenue, but the college’s finances won’t be dire.
An analysis done by OPSEU Local 237 — the union that represents faculty, librarians and counsellors at the college — found that if the number of international students were halved, the college would still have a surplus between $30 million and $40 million.
However, Conestoga did not clarify the exact number of international permits it has been allocated, and
it has not confirmed the analysis carried out by the union.
No school will be allowed to have more international students than it did in 2023, meaning that even with a 50 per cent cut at Conestoga, it is still likely to have more international students accepted in 2024 than any other institution in the province had last year.
Seneca College in Toronto had the second-most student visas approved in 2023, with just under 11,000.
How it got here
Conestoga President John Tibbits has long warned that Canada’s aging population could lead to a situation where the workforce can’t meet demand, requiring large numbers of immigrants to fill the gap.
This was a multidecade story, and Tibbits began laying the framework in the 1990s for international enrolment growth, building connections with countries around the world that could be sources of students.
“I had a lot of pressure on me back then: ‘What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?’ said Tibbits, who has been president since 1987, in a recent interview with The Record. “Because don’t forget, guess who was flying around the world? It was me. And it looked like junkets, but let me tell you, it was no junkets when you’re flying to China in those days and staying in Chinese hotels.”
In 2019, the financial challenges for the college sector escalated when Premier Doug Ford slashed tuition fees by 10 per cent and instituted a tuition freeze that is expected to stay until at least 2027.
The ability to attract international students, who pay as much as five times the fees of domestic students, suddenly became a priority for post-secondary institutions, and the numbers nationally quickly ballooned to over one million international students in 2023.
But Conestoga was already ahead of its peers.
In 2019, Conestoga had already seen dramatic increases in international enrolment. Internally, faculty and staff began sounding the alarm, warning of the risks continued expansion posed to both the academic integrity of the institution, and to the students.
But with growth plans firmly in place, the college doubled down on international enrolment. Then tripled down. Then quadrupled down.
Immigration records show Conestoga has no rival in its international expansion. It holds the nation’s top spot with more than 51,000 international student visas approved in 2022 and 2023; it had more than 30,000 international students in 2023, after more than 20,000 students were approved in 2022.
But that is just part of the college’s international expansion story, as it only looks at the applications that were accepted by the federal government.
Study permits the tip of the iceberg
Between 2022 and 2023, the federal government received more than 94,000 student visa applications for Conestoga: just over 42,000 in 2022 and just under 52,000 in 2023.
For someone to apply for a student visa, they must first receive acceptance from an institution, which is referred to as a designated learning institution. That means Conestoga granted acceptance to 94,000 international students in 2022 and 2023.
“Provinces and territories designate learning institutions in their jurisdiction that are approved to host international students. Designated learning institutions (DLI) then issue letters of acceptance to foreign nationals they have accepted as students. By issuing a letter of acceptance to a foreign national, the DLI is, in fact, asking the federal government to admit them to Canada,” said Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada spokesperson Jeffrey MacDonald.
Prior to this year, the federal government did not limit the number of study permit applications, assuming that “designated learning institutions would only accept the number of international students they can properly support and provide services to, including assistance in finding housing,” said MacDonald.
However, acceptance is not guaranteed, and institutions use historical acceptance data to forecast how many international students will come, based on the number of acceptances they send out.
Acceptance rates vary greatly by country; applicants are accepted based on a variety of factors including financial requirements, previous academic study, proposed academic programs and whether the applicant is likely to respect Canada’s immigration laws.
As Tibbits said in a recent interview with The Record, Conestoga did not expect to grow as quickly as it did. That surprise may partly be because the acceptance rate for international students suddenly grew in 2023.
In 2022, the college had a 49 per cent acceptance rate for international students. That jumped to 58 per cent in 2023.
MacDonald did not give a reason for the sudden increase for Conestoga, saying only that acceptance rates fluctuate year to year.
Acceptance rates vary by country
At Conestoga, and across the country, the main catalysts for this acceptance bump came from a large increase in acceptances for Indian students.
Applications from Indian students increased just one per cent in 2023 across the nation and fell by one per cent at Conestoga. Despite this, the number of approved applications for Indian students increased 15 per cent in the nation and 35 per cent at Conestoga as the federal approval rate for Indian students soared.
Nationally there was an eightpoint increase in the 2023 approval rate for Indian applications to reach 67 per cent; Conestoga saw an 18-point increase to reach 69 per cent.
Conestoga had more than 25,000 study permits accepted from India in 2023, compared to less than 19,000 in 2022.
The data shows Conestoga has also started focusing on different areas in the world, particularly in Africa, with rapidly growing numbers of applications from Nigeria, Ghana and Ethiopia.
Acceptance rates for all three of these countries remains low, but the college granted thousands of acceptance letters to students in all three countries.
Whether the college can continue to attract large numbers of highpaying international students could affect the college’s growth plans. Tibbits has said it plans to invest more than $1 billion if its foreign enrolment isn’t too badly hit.
The cap in Ontario is only in effect for 2024 and 2025, and while Indian applications may have already peaked, there is room for growth in many other markets around the world.
As Conestoga concluded in its statement on Thursday: “We remain committed to our students, employees, and the communities we serve to deliver in-demand career and skills training to help local businesses grow and thrive, and to contribute to the economy for generations to come.”
Between 2022 and 2023, the federal government received more than 94,000 student visa applications for Conestoga