First, there is the Conestoga-Sault College stand-off. You have probably already seen this one, but I have to point it out anyways, because it’s the most objectively hilarious thing that’s happened in years.

Briefly, Sault College President David Orazietti made some comments to the effect that Conestoga President John Tibbits (the man who brought in 30,000 international students into southwestern Ontario, built new campuses to house them all and named one of them after himself) was the “bad actor” which made the feds intervene and ruin the game for everyone (see here for my call on why it was only a matter of time before the rest of the sector turned on Conestoga). Tibbits responded by pointing out (reasonably) that Sault College could hardly claim innocence on the housing file when it was creating PPPs campuses that brought thousands of international students in GTA communities hundreds of miles from the Sault, and (less reasonably) that Orazietti was “a whore” who needs to “shut his mouth.” The Conestoga Board apologized on Tibbits’s behalf, saying this language was unacceptable. But by that time, Orazietti had gone to the media asking the auditor general to investigate Conestoga’s finances.

Genuinely, I think Colleges Ontario could make a lot of money selling tickets to its next membership meeting. I know I would pay a hefty sum to be in the room.

Second, the fed-prov discussions on visa numbers. Little birds tell me that Marc Miller has been meeting by phone with provincial education ministries to let them know what their quota of spots is. And, despite the widely cited claim that provinces will each be getting their “proportionate” demographic share of spots, a number of provinces are finding out that their allocation is actually below their demographic share. No explanation for the difference seems to have been forthcoming from the feds (which is par for the course in this busted federation), but for what it’s worth, my guess is that in fact the feds are holding back visa spots for all provinces so they can tinker as necessary as the year goes on, perhaps in order to (for instance) reallocate spots to make sure minority language institutions can do what is needed to achieve the enrolment targets. If that’s the case it’s not necessarily nefarious, but the fact that the provinces don’t feel like the feds are on the level bodes ill for future cooperation on this file.

Third, it turns out that the actual regulations don’t say what everyone thinks they say. When Marc Miller made his big announcement a few weeks ago, he made it with the promise that the goal was to bring the number of visas issued to approximately 360,000 per year. I always thought this was a little odd. Why “approximately” and how did they plan to hit the number so squarely given the actual operational complexity in approving visas?

Well, thanks to the folks at Applyboard, who bothered to actually dig through the actual wording of the regulations, we know now the truth. Turns out that there is not and never was an actual visa cap. There is only an application processing cap.

Here’s how it works: the regulations specify that in any given year, only 606,250 visa applications will be processed. This excludes visas for students in K-12 or for Master’s/Doctoral programs. But it includes visa extensions for students in sub-graduate programs that need some extra time to graduate, or who are switching from one program to another. From an operational POV this makes perfect sense—it’s way easier to set a hard cap on processing rather than on visas because visas might not get issued or used for a variety of reasons. The 360,000 seems to have been derived from the fact that only about 60% of all visas in fact get accepted; the rest are rejected for a variety of reasons which basically amount to “an immigration agent doesn’t believe this student is legit.” So individual institutions are not being given visa quotas; instead, they are being given application quotas.

But of course, visa approval rates are largely determined by national origin (approval rates by country available here). So institutions that want to avoid a decrease in their international student numbers will naturally shift their recruiting strategies: they will start to move their recruitment towards countries that have higher approval rates. Meaning, to the extent possible, away from Africa and India towards East Asia, Europe, and Latin America. If they do it right, a reduction in applications need not necessarily see a reduction in actual visa students. But since these countries tend to be more challenging environments where students seeking to study abroad are not necessarily looking to emigrate, that means institutions will need to significantly up their game in terms of providing a value proposition. No more coasting on the prospect of permanent residency.

Of course, nothing is going to change this year. We are too late in the application cycle to change anything and with the visa processing freeze and the requirement for provincial attestation likely to keep things frozen for another couple of months at least. This year is going to be an unmitigated disaster. But for next year’s application cycle? Things could get very interesting indeed.