Quinte News spoke with the senior vice-president of Strategic Planning & Institutional Effectiveness at Loyalist College, Deanne Saunders, about how a policy affecting the number of international students coming to Canada will affect the college in 2025.
The federal government announced a cap on the number of new international study permits being issued leading to fewer international students coming to Canada.
Saunders tells Quinte News that it saw a decrease of 25% in international student enrolment for the fall 2024 term between the Belleville and Port Hope campuses.
She says the college is preparing for fewer international students in 2025.
“While I’m citing 25% for fall 2024, that decline could be as much as 50% in the next couple of years,” Saunders tells Quinte News.
“So this is kind of not the end in terms of of the decrease that we’re seeing.”
Saunders says what kinds of impacts it will have on the college internally is yet to be known.
“I’m not exaggerating when I say that every month, if not every week for a period there, we were responding to new policy measures, and trying to evaluate internally what impact that will have,” Saunders said.
“So in some ways we are still very much analyzing the impact.”
She says a better idea on the impacts will likely come at the end of the fiscal year.
