By Mata Press Service

British Columbia’s universities and colleges are facing an academic and financial reckoning as Ottawa’s cap on international students takes hold, triggering staff layoffs, program suspensions, and warnings that the province’s education system is at risk of long-term damage.

Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU), the University of Victoria, the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and Langara College have all reported steep drops in foreign enrolment, according to local media reports.

At KPU, acting president Diane Purvey told staff that the university had just 2,360 international students this fall, down from nearly 6,000 two years earlier. “KPU continues to experience large declines in international student enrolment because of federal government changes,” Purvey wrote in a memo.

She noted that visa processing delays and rising rejection rates are now “the biggest barrier for international students seeking admission to Canada.”

To offset the revenue shortfall, KPU is eliminating up to 45 full-time positions, declining to renew temporary contracts, and leaving 20 vacant posts unfilled. The Melville School of Business, long a magnet for overseas students, has been hit particularly hard, with eight instructors receiving layoff notices effective January 2026.

“We are deeply disappointed these additional reductions are necessary,” Purvey said, warning that the effect would extend well beyond this year. “The impact will be felt in future years as students who graduate and leave are not replaced by equivalent numbers of incoming students.”

Langara College reported that about 2,400 international students have enrolled this semester, half the number from 2022.

At the University of Victoria, foreign enrolment is expected to fall by 40 per cent from last year, dropping to 1,340 students. UBC and SFU have also confirmed reductions tied to the federal cap.

The shockwaves stem from Ottawa’s January 2024 announcement of a two-year cap on new study permits. The aim was to reduce the number of permits by 35 per cent in 2024 compared to 2023, setting a target of 364,000 approvals.

But Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) overshot its own target. Data provided to ICEF Monitor shows that only 267,890 new study permits were approved in 2024—a 48 per cent drop from the year before and almost 100,000 below the official target.

Two factors made matters worse: fewer applications were processed overall, down 32 per cent, and approval rates plummeted. In 2023, about 60 percent of applicants were approved. In 2024, the rate sank to 48 percent, meaning more than half of applicants were turned away.

For institutions already leaning heavily on foreign tuition to make up for stagnant public funding, the results have been devastating. Universities and colleges across Canada are now reporting enrolment losses ranging from 30 to 50 per cent.

While B.C. schools are now sounding alarms, Ontario’s public colleges have already borne the brunt. Arbitrator William Kaplan, in a labour report earlier this year, wrote that 23 of Ontario’s 24 colleges saw a 48 per cent drop in foreign enrolment between September 2023 and September 2024.

“The impact of these declining numbers of foreign students has been both immediate and dramatic,” Kaplan said, noting that more than 600 programs were cancelled or suspended by spring 2025, and four colleges shut down campuses.

By June 2025, 19 Ontario colleges had cut or planned to cut more than 8,000 employees. The Ontario Public Service Employees Union called it “one of the largest mass layoffs in Ontario’s history.”

Ken Steele, president of the consultancy Eduvation, has been tracking the fallout nationwide. His tally, current to July 2025, counts 8,580 job losses in Canadian universities and colleges, about 60 per cent of them in Ontario. If Kaplan’s estimates prove correct, actual and planned losses may approach 12,000 positions.

For B.C., the immediate concern is budget shortfalls, but the longer-term worry is reputational. International students account for billions of dollars in tuition and local spending, but they also contribute to research, innovation, and the talent pool in key sectors such as healthcare and technology.

Universities Canada president Gabriel Miller has urged Ottawa to recalibrate.

“The cap was emergency surgery,” he told CTV News. “It’s time for the patient to start recovering. Canada must remind the world it remains a great place to study, work, and invest.”

Miller stressed that the problem is not just the cap itself, but visa backlogs and policy shifts that have undermined Canada’s appeal. He pointed to new restrictions on post-study work rights, tighter financial requirements, and limited spousal work permits. “Nobody disputes the need for lower immigration targets,” he said, “but the current approach is keeping out far more students than intended.”

Data for the first half of 2025 underscores the concern: only 149,860 study permits were issued between January and June, down from 245,055 during the same period in 2024. With an annual target of 305,900, Canada is already far off pace.

The federal government has extended the cap into 2026, reducing annual permit numbers by an additional 10 percent from 2024 levels.

It has also set, for the first time, strategic immigration targets for temporary residents, aiming to reduce their share of Canada’s population to 5 per cent by 2026. Prime Minister Mark Carney has since conceded that this may not be achievable until 2027.