As international student numbers tumble, domestic postsecondary enrolment rebounds

The number of Canadian students enrolling in colleges and universities is growing at the fastest pace in more than 15 years, but that’s barely enough to fill the gap left by Ottawa’s clampdown on international student admissions that has left some schools’ finances in tatters.

For the 2024-25 academic year, 2.3 million students enrolled in public colleges or universities, a slim 0.1-per-cent increase from the previous year, according to Statistics Canada numbers released on Thursday.

But the mute pace of growth masked a dramatic reversal for both Canadian and international students, with domestic student enrolment rebounding to 2010-11 levels. Meanwhile, the number of students enrolling from abroad shrank by 39,600 or 6.9 per cent, the steepest decline going back to at least the early 1990s, when Statscan began keeping records.

One force behind the domestic-enrolment increase may be the broadly weak job market for younger Canadians, prompting more people to pursue postsecondary education. That pattern looks set to continue into the current school year, with a number of schools reporting a strong rebound in domestic applications.

Several provinces have also poured money into adding more spaces for domestic students pursuing fields experiencing labour shortages, such as health care, the sciences and the trades.

But it’s also true that colleges and universities face continuing declines in foreign enrolment after measures by the federal government to restrict the number of international study permits. That has forced schools to suspend programs and close some campuses.

With Canadian schools charging international undergraduate students an average of five times more for tuition, it will require an even larger rebound by domestic students to make up for that shortfall.

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