Questions around international student cap causing uncertainty for University of Waterloo

Changing rules and a lack of clarity around the number of international students allowed into post-secondary institutions has University of Waterloo (UW) president Vivek Goel worried about what that means for the school's future.

"That's part of the challenge right now is the uncertainty because we haven't heard yet from the province on how it will make decisions around allocating between colleges and universities, first of all, between private and public institutions, for individual institutions," he told CBC News.

Last month, the federal government announced a cap on the number of permits they'll provide to international students, cutting them by 35 per cent across the country. In Ontario, it'll be as high as 50 per cent. 

UW's admissions process has already begun for the next academic year — the majority of undergraduate program applications had to be in by Feb. 1.

"We can't predict right now what the overall impact for us is going to be," Goel said. "But we expect it will be a significant decline this fall in our international student population." 

At UW, 15 per cent of all students are international.

Although the directive to cap international students came from the federal government, the province decides what that looks like Ontario-wide.

CBC News reached out to the provincial Ministry of Colleges and Universities for a timeline around UW's international student cap. They didn't specify, but instead pointed to a news release from last month. 

Brenda Bereczki, a spokesperson for Conestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, said they too "don't have details from the province yet," but they're pushing forward with their current major projects, including the development of their Cambridge skilled trades campus. 

"Conestoga has managed this growth in student enrolment responsibly, investing in student housing, campus expansions, facilities and student support services," Bereczki said in an email statement. 

Financial uncertainty for UW

Goel said the question marks around admissions adds financial uncertainty too, since they're currently "setting [their] budget for the coming year."

Ever since the province froze tuition for domestic students, after cutting them by 10 per cent in 2019, some post-secondary institutions have leaned on international students to fill in the gaps.

The decrease in international students doesn't open spots up for domestic students — Goel said this is capped by the province, too. UW is also running at a deficit of $15 million, according to James Rush, vice-president of student academic and provost. 

There were recommendations by a panel set up by the Ministry of Colleges and Universities to unfreeze tuition fees, but Premier Doug Ford said he doesn't want to go in that direction.

"I just don't believe this is the time to go into these students' pockets, especially the ones that are really struggling and ask for a tuition increase," said Ford at a media conference last month. 

The panel had also suggested that the province up the grants they provide to post-secondary institutions for students, but in a news release, the ministry said it will have more information about where it landed with the panel's recommendations by the end of this month. 

"There's no revenue tools available to the institutions anymore and so costs are going to go up, and you have no mechanisms for increasing revenue — that's how you have institutions facing very dire circumstances," Goel said. 

He said UW was "already facing many challenges with recruitment of the top talent in the world," and believes the recent news hasn't helped things.

"The announcement has just really made it much, much worse because it's created this huge level of uncertainty out there and the brand reputation from Canada as a destination for international study has really been damaged as a result of the last couple of weeks," he said.