Achi news desk-
Ontario will prioritize its reduced number of international undergraduate student study permits to post-secondary institutions that offer in-demand programs such as in the skilled trades, childcare and health care, the province said Wednesday.
The federal government announced earlier this year that it would reduce the number of international student permits it would issue, with Ontario seeing its allotment cut in half.
“We are protecting the integrity of our province’s post-secondary education system by attracting the best and brightest international students to Ontario to study in fields vital to our economy,” Colleges and Universities Minister Jill Dunlop said in a statement.
“We have been working with post-secondary institutions to ensure that international students are enrolled on the programs to support a flow of graduates for in-demand jobs.”
Almost all of the licenses will go to publicly aided colleges and universities, with private career colleges getting none.
Post-secondary institutions, particularly colleges, in the province increasingly turned to international students after Premier Doug Ford’s government cut tuition by 10 per cent in 2019 and froze it there.
The tuition freeze remains in place, the province said last month.
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Last month, Dunlop gave post-secondary institutions a $1.3-billion funding bailout, but the colleges and universities said they needed double that amount. Many post-secondary institutions have financial shortfalls this year.
Ontario’s budget this week indicated that the lost international student revenue in the college sector, whose funding appears on the province’s books, will total about $3 billion over two years.
The province said 22 of 23 universities will keep study permit applications at 2023 levels, but fewer will be allocated to Algoma University. And 11 of 24 colleges will keep the allotment of applications at the 2023 level. Conestoga College and colleges with public-private partnerships will see the biggest decline, the province said.
Ontario Colleges CEO Marketa Evans said colleges are pleased that their institutions will receive the majority of applications for international study permits, but they are still being left in the lurch.
The federal government’s student visa changes have already led to the “collapse” of the spring cohort at public colleges, and there will be a “severe impact” on the fall term with revenue losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Evans said.
“This has led to significant efforts to reduce costs, as colleges are not allowed to run unfunded deficits,” he wrote in a statement.
“The consequences include the immediate suspension of programs and the delay of capital investments that include investments in student housing.”
Universities are responsible for recruiting and managing international students, said Steve Orsini, president of the Ontario Council of Universities.
“The decision to cap international undergraduate allocations at 2023 levels will limit the ability of universities to increase enrollment modestly, which will exacerbate the financial pressure on the sector,” Orsini said in a statement.
Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller has said the cap is in response to a recent surge in international students and is meant to prevent bad actors from taking advantage of high tuition fees while providing poor education.
“Want to review the details of this announcement in more detail, but this appears to be a very reasonable response from the Government of Ontario,” Miller said on social media Wednesday.
Alex Usher, president of Higher Education Strategy Associates, said the plan was “more promising than I would have expected.”
“It sounds to me that they did the right thing, which is that they kept the biggest losses for the people who have public-private partnerships, as well as Algoma, along with Conestoga, which are the organizations that did not go on the PPP route. , but he built completely new campuses just for international students,” he said.
“There’s some basic procedural fairness there.”
& copy 2024 The Canadian Press
