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vancouver's langara college among those bracing for drastic plunge in foreign students
douglas todd: langara college faculty are preparing for a “sudden and overwhelming drop” in enrolment as foreign student numbers decline unevenly across the province.
jul 25 2024
5 minute read
langara faces a 79-percent slump in foreign student applications for the spring of 2025 compared to the same period last year.
francis georgian
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langara college is preparing for drastic cuts in enrolment, particularly of high-fee-paying international students.
langara president paula burns has told faculty there has been a 79 per cent drop in foreign student applications for the spring of 2025 compared to the same period last year.
faculty association members have sent a group message to their colleagues calling it a “crisis” — a “sudden and overwhelming drop” in enrolment that “will hit all of us.”
the nosedive in prospective international students, along with a decline in domestic students, will impact wages, benefits and jobs, langara college instructors christa giampa, jehanne marie burns and luciano lotario greggio warned faculty in a group email.
with 37 per cent of langara students holding study visas, the college has one of the highest proportions of foreign students of any public post-secondary institution in b.c.
last year, langara college enrolled about 7,500 international students, most of them from india, according to federal government figures. that means it has more international students than simon fraser university, a much larger institution.
still, sfu, the university of victoria and vancouver island university are also among institutes that are preparing budget cuts because of declining numbers of international students, who generally pay tuition fees four times higher than domestic students. ubc says it’s enrolment is tracking in line with earlier budget projections, which are “balanced.”
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kwantlen polytechnic university has the highest proportion of international students : 38 per cent of the total, accounting for about 8,400 students.
at north vancouver’s capilano university, 31 per cent of students are on study visas.
unlike in many countries, almost all canadian study visas allow students to work.
at langara college, president burns said in her message to faculty that while foreign student applications are down 79 per cent for the january term, they are also down nine per cent for the fall term, which begins in just six weeks.
burns attributed the declines to several factors.
they include immigration minister marc miller’s promise in january to decrease the number of study visas it hands out by 35 per cent this year compared to last.
the b.c. government has also been making reforms — including instituting a new requirement that no more than 30 per cent of students at public post-secondary schools can be foreign students. there are 217,000 foreign students in the province’s post-secondary institutions.
this year both the federal and b.c. governments are expressing the need to temper the record volume of foreign students because of the impact on runaway housing costs, particularly rents, as well as on infrastructure and social services, such as health care.
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on a national level, there are mixed signals about the pace at which foreign students are entering canada.
last year the country had about 1.1 million foreign students, a jump of three times from when justin trudeau was elected in 2015.
despite miller pledging to cap study visa approvals at 360,000 for this year, immigration department data shows it issued more study visas in the first five months of this year than it did in the first five months of last year, which broke records.
according to numbers from the immigration department , canada has handed out 217,000 international study permits in the first five months of 2024. in the same period in 2023, 200,000 were handed out.
immigration minister marc miller pledged to cap study visa approvals at 360,000 for this year. but the department has already handed out 217,000 in just the first five months of 2024.
justin tang
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the canadian press
in b.c., however, study visa numbers are slightly reduced. in the first five months of 2024 the immigration department has issued 40,000 visas to those who say they will study in b.c. that’s down from about 45,000 in the same period last year.
in response to postmedia’s questions, the immigration department said via email: “it is premature to claim the cap isn’t working.”
the ministry noted the cap doesn’t apply to students who apply to extend their studies from within the country, nor to those attending kindergarten-to-grade 12 programs. it also said it expected visa approvals will go down in the months of august and september.
andrew griffith, a former immigration department director who now writes independently about migration, says he believes overall foreign student numbers will begin broadly declining soon.
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a crucial government data table, he says, reveals that the volume of people around the world inquiring on the immigration department’s website about getting a canadian study visa is down 26 per cent this year compared to last.
for instance, there were far fewer inquiries about obtaining a canadian study visa in june of this year: 68,000 compared to 110,000 in june of 2023.
while students from india have become the biggest cohort of international students in canada in recent years, taking over top spot from students from china, there was a much lower number of inquiries from india in june of this year: 4,900, compared to 11,900 in the same month last year.
meanwhile, there were 5,100 inquires from nigerians in june of this year compared to 11,600 last june. the number of inquiries from the u.s. declined to 4,200 in june this year compared to 6,800 in the same month last year, and inquiries from china were 1,900, a decline from 3,300 in the same month last year.
langara college officials did not respond to postmedia’s questions about enrolment numbers and possible impact.
a kwantlen polytechnic university official declined to provide enrolment data, but said efforts are being made to avoid faculty layoffs. a capilano university official said only that overall registration is up 11 per cent this fall compared to last, particularly because of an 18 per cent rise in domestic students.
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although several langara faculty have provided information about the challenges facing their college, the only one who allowed her name to be used is jessie smith, a veteran member of the latin american studies department.
“the truth is everything is so tumultuous right now that nobody knows what’s going on. our union is showing strong leadership and working hard to share information and support faculty.”
langara’s faculty association is among many, smith said, who warned that relying on international students is “a risky strategy for funding post-secondary institutions. it’s important the federal government understand their attempt to support international students, though valiant, has led to a situation in which many people will be out of work.”
smith said when there is an overall decline in demand from both international and domestic students, it strongly impacts institutions like langara college, because it can make it possible for students who would have applied to college to instead try to get accepted into a university.
the faculty who are most vulnerable to layoffs are those who teach on term-by-term contracts, particularly in business programs, which are most popular among foreign students, smith said. the reduction in course offerings will also affect domestic students, who will have fewer classes from which to choose.
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