International Study Permits to Drop by 50 Percent This Year, Report Projects

McGill University is seen in Montreal on Oct. 13, 2023. The Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz

The Canadian government’s approvals of international study permits are projected to drop by nearly half in 2024, according to a new analysis based on figures from Ottawa.

“While the federal government’s cap on study permit applications was designed to increase the sector’s sustainability, data from the first half of the year shows the cap may have contributed to chilling demand to the extent that the government’s projections for 2024 will not be met,” reads the report by ApplyBoard, a company that connects international students to colleges and universities across Canada.

The report says that in the second quarter of 2024, the number of new study permit applications processed by Ottawa fell by 54 percent when compared with the second quarter of 2023. ApplyBoard predicts there will be a 39 percent decrease in global applications for Canadian study permits in 2024 compared with 2023.

If current trends continue, around 230,000 new study permits are expected to be processed in the second half of 2024, resulting in approval of just over 231,000 study permits for 2024. This is around 47 percent lower than the 436,600 new study permits approved a year earlier.

The number of applications processed for master’s and doctoral programs, which were not included in the government cap, also dropped significantly in the first half of 2024, with the trend projected to continue throughout 2024.

The number of international students in Canada hit record levels in 2022, with government figures showing more than 807,000 study permit holders, an increase of over 190,000 from 2021. That increased further in 2023, with the number of international students hitting over 1 million.

In January 2024, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada announced it was capping the number of new international student permits issued this year to 364,000, which would stabilize growth for the next two years. The cost of living requirement for international students also doubled from $10,000 to $20,635 to better reflect the “true cost of living in Canada.”

The department said in June that it’s also implementing new regulations to curb “unethical behaviour” by some colleges so they can’t abuse the foreign student program.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller said earlier this year that some colleges were engaging in questionable practices in accepting large numbers of foreign students, including a portion who promptly claimed refugee protection in Canada.

“Ontario over the last three years in their education system has had over 10,000 asylum claims,” he told reporters on Feb. 27. “That isn’t the sign of a healthy system.”

Breakdown by Country

Broken down by country, the ApplyBoard report found the number of approved Indian study permits fell from 111,934 to 55,525 in the first quarter of 2024 from a year earlier. Nigerian study permits decreased from 13,914 to 3,891, the Philippines fell from 9,193 to 3,253, Nepal fell from 8,243 to 1,981, while China increased slightly from 6,415 to 6,750.

The report also noted that international students’ interest in studying in Canada has decreased since 2023, with almost 20 percent fewer global searches for “study in Canada” than in in 2023.

“Policy updates including the study permit cap have certainly affected how international students perceive Canada as a study abroad destination,” the report says.