Cast your minds back to January of 2024, when the federal government suddenly decided that housing was an issue, international students were the problem and implemented a complicated and irritating-to-implement set of caps that were 35% lower nationally than for 2023 (and in Ontario significantly more than that). Then, in 2025 came another set of changes including a 10% cut in the national limit. And then, on top of that, a set of new conditions on post-graduate work visas were imposed which were specifically designed to depress demand for certain types of education.
To the extent that the world outside post-secondary education absorbed this news and didn’t dismiss it outright because Ontario colleges in particular “deserved it” for pouring gasoline onto a housing shortage bonfire, the reaction to all this was: “boy, losing nearly half your international students is really going to lead to a financial pinch”. But this reaction was wrong in two ways. First, that 50-percent was an average – in most cases, institutions either saw drops that were either significantly higher or significantly lower than that. Partly, this was because the federal government designed the cap drop to hit provinces unequally (Ontario to the max and Quebec not at all, for instance) and part of it had to do with the fact that some provinces distributed the cap hit in some peculiar ways (see back here for an earlier blog on this).
But second, and most importantly, not many institutions actually even met these significantly-lowered quotas. Talk to folks in institutions these days and they will tell you that it’s not that the caps are too low, but that demand for Canadian post-secondary has simply dried up: no one wants to come to Canada anymore. I believe this. Former Immigration Minister Marc Miller did a serious number on the reputation of Canada’s post-secondary. If you go around accusing institutions of fraud and deceit and imposing clampdowns on student visas (it wasn’t just the caps – visa processing times are up and visa refusal rates are rising too), foreign students might get the idea that the country doesn’t want them, and so they never apply in the first place. I am sure Marc Miller would deny ever wanting to dry up demand, but it is exactly what his ham-fisted, Attila-the-Hun in a China shop approach to student visas managed to achieve.
(And still, so many bien-pensant people think Liberals are the good guys on higher education. Or think more federal involvement in the higher education file would be a good thing. God Save Us All.)
Anyways, as a result of this, universities and colleges are in a funk and wondering if and when international students will come back and (partially) save their bacon, financially speaking. But what is shocking, to me at least, is how unbelievably passive the sector is. They are waiting for students to come. Just waiting. ‘Why don’t they come?’ people ask. ‘It’s that darn Marc Miller! Nothing we can do about it’.
You see the problem with the international student industry in Canada is that institutions themselves never grew an overseas recruitment game the way UK and Australian institutions did. By the time Canadian institutions started thinking about the whole international-students-as-revenue thing, the feds had already created the student-to-permanent immigration pathway via our post-graduate work visas and the like. And then, when things got hotter, aggregators like ApplyBoard came along and made it so easy to attract students that a lot of Canadian institutions just never upped their ground game on student recruitment.
You see, despite Canadian institutions’ tendency to congratulate themselves on their “international outlook” and their ability to attract international students, very few of them ever bothered to go deep either on recruitment tactics (spending time abroad, juicing the recruitment pipeline) or on paying attention to the international student experience on campus. Some did, of course, but I can count the number who would be considered on par with the top institutions in the anglosphere on one hand.
When it comes to internationalization, Canada is the kid who was born on third base and thinks they hit a triple. So many unearned advantages. And so, when Attila-the-Minister came along and took away most of those unearned advantages, people did not know what to do. The simple answer – UP YOUR GROUND GAME IN A FEW KEY TARGET MARKETS FOR GOD’S SAKE – seems not to have been considered very widely.
I suspect one of the reasons for this is a deeply unsexy one: internal funding formulas for non-academic units. You see, under the enshittification model that is widely prevalent in Canadian institutions (more so in universities than colleges, but the latter aren’t immune from it), when a budget crunch happens, everyone needs to cut back. And so, international units, far from being given more money to go fight for students in overseas markets, sometimes have to scale back their activities (or at least not increase them as they should). The idea that it takes money to make money does not fit easily with a budget model that bases this year’s budget on what you got last year plus or minus a percentage point or two.
This is bananas, of course. Self-destructive, even. But even if you gave international offices more money, they wouldn’t necessarily know how to spend it. The born-on-third-base thing meant we never needed to fight that hard for international students – they just kind of showed up. The situation Canadian institutions are in right now requires a lot more bodies on the ground overseas, understanding individual city markets, developing relationships with schools and agents, and attending more fairs, in more cities and more countries. This is how Australia and the UK developed their international markets. We managed to skip a lot of that in the ‘10s. We are going to have to learn it now.
The shock, pain and impact of both the visa caps and Marc Miller setting fire to the country’s reputation are all real. Never forgive, never forget (but also: never again wish for the federal government to be more active in post-secondary education). But institutions are not without agency here. My feeling is that in too many cases they are just throwing up their hands, either because they prefer not to spend on recruitment or are insufficiently skilled at doing so in the absence of a cuddly national image or an absurdly favorable visa system.
You want markets? Invest in them. Fight for them. If Canadian post-secondary education is as good as everyone claims it is, students will come. Passiveness helps no one.
6 Responses
The recent restructuring of Canada’s Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) program to align with labor market demands has narrowed the range of eligible CIP academic programs, reducing the international student pool for DLIs. Even well-funded recruitment efforts face challenges, as revising degree offerings to meet both student interest and CIP requirements is a slow, resource-intensive process—one that not all DLIs are equipped to handle.
Nailed it again Alex. Housing was never anything but a red herring. The sad reality is that there were cheap political points to be had by jumping on a growing anti-immigration sentiment, thereby cutting off one of the ‘Rights’ effective platforms. Strangely, (for an economist) the new sheriff is otherwise focussed and willing to cash in on the same political advantage. The damage is not only to the PSE budgets (compounded by years of underfunding) and to the economy as a whole, but arguably more concerning is that we will lose access to many of the world’s best and brightest – which is a self-destructive, lasting, and nation-wide harm. Turning to your solution, being born on third base is definitely true, but this can be addressed if they heed your advice to improve their ground-game. However, the truly gargantuan and implicit challenge is that they will now need to sell the ROI, not as a path to PR, but as a ‘great education’. This is a challenge for all, but a near impossible task for a majority of regional colleges and universities. So, as much as I agree that we don’t want the feds messing with higher education; we are going to need them to align immigration targets, labour, and economic goals with PSE international student strategies. Perhaps the new minister could take a true nation-building approach to this challenge!
Yes, we need to build ..invest in the Canadian global footprint! Canada’s two pillar education system is second to none. Not only do we produce graduates at the traditional university levels but we produce global graduates that supply a high tech workforce from heal to engineering! We have a weapon that can bring peace and success and economic stability not only for our own nation but to developed, developing and emerging economies! And yes, not only can we put Canada first but Canadian education is a valuable export that can impact not only our GDP but the GDP of others! Not sure why we have “scapegoated” the international students for all of our woes! Maybe because they don’t vote ! We have an aging population and we need young people -what better source than students who pay their own way, who learn our values…who co tribute ..and raise their children here…yes wd need an immigration plan and they should not take the seats or jobs of Canadians! But they are an excellent pool for an immigrant pathway if their is a plan and they can be a critical part of a strong nation!
I recall being on the street of Myeong-dong, Korea, when I saw the news that PGWP was being taken away from public colleges, and it completely shocked me. I am honestly not surprised by what has happened since then.
As an immigration consultant who thinks he kind of knows what he is doing, I truly think blaming all the weird things that happened in the international education system on public colleges is ridiculous. IRCC has other options, including reforming its study permit requirements, setting up better examinations for study permit applications, and revoking the licenses of unethical private institutions. Those are really measures to stop international education fraud, not simply cutting off all PGWP eligibility.
One thing is very simple but interestingly mentioned in this article: the minister seemed to have completely forgotten why the good people want to come to study in Canada, while they wanted to chase out the bad guys. Yes, sometimes those things are the same for both good and bad guys. When you want to get rid of the people you don’t want, you need to identify who they are and pick them out from your guest list to keep them outside of your house, but not just simply shut your door to everybody. Let me ask this one question: why do people come to Canada, when we have fewer than 10 universities ranked in the top 100, and not all colleges are getting PGWP? Not to mention most of the jobs showing in both provincial in-demand lists are trained in colleges, not universities.
What this piece captures especially well is how exposed Canada’s international education model becomes once the unearned advantages are removed. For years, institutions benefited from a uniquely favourable visa-to-work-to-PR ecosystem and a generally positive national brand, without having to build the kind of sophisticated, place-based recruitment and student-experience strategies seen in the UK or Australia. When policy abruptly shifted, there was no resilience underneath.
The damage done by sudden caps, rising refusal rates, and inflammatory rhetoric is real—but institutional passivity is just as troubling. Waiting for demand to “come back” assumes that international students are a natural resource rather than globally mobile consumers making high-stakes investment decisions. In a world where Canada now must compete on educational value rather than immigration arbitrage, the lack of serious ground-game investment is glaring.
That said, there is a structural bind here that cannot be ignored. Budget models that punish revenue-seeking behaviour, coupled with tighter PGWP eligibility and uncertain immigration signals, make it extraordinarily difficult—especially for regional institutions—to pivot quickly. Selling a “great education” without a credible ROI story is a far harder proposition than many in the sector are willing to admit.
The takeaway, though, is clear: neither nostalgia for the old system nor exclusive blame-shifting to IRCC will fix this. If Canada wants to remain relevant in international education, institutions must invest, professionalize, and compete—and governments must stop treating international students as a political liability rather than a strategic national asset. Passivity is not a strategy.
Yes, Canada needs to invest more and fights for her international student markets. In China, more and more students show their interest in studying in the UK and Australia than in Canada compared with it of 10 years ago.Even students in offshore BC and ON high school program in China where I worked before, usually give priority to universities in the UK, Australia or USA over Canada. Canada definitely needs to market more overseas of its policies and advantages to its target countries and potential students. In China, it is very rare to see any advertisements of Canadian post secondary education . However, it is more common to know and hear about British and American curricula , such as A-level, IB, AP , IGCSE in China than Canadian Curriculum. Hoping the organizations and associations will work together to market more about advanced Canadian post secondary education internationally.