While it’s been nearly a year since its introduction, the Canadian international student cap still represents a significant shift in policy compared to the previous decade. Its limitations on student mobility have already dampened student interest in studying in Canada, although it will still be months before full 2024 study permit impacts are known.
Now, the Government of Canada has announced that it will be further tightening its international student cap in 2025. And, in the two weeks since then, we’ve seen a lot of confusion among students, counsellors, institution staff, and sector leaders on the 2025 cap numbers, terminology, and more. This is to no fault of their own—the 2024 cap itself was technically complex, and as Alex Usher rightly pointed out, the sector continues to wait on specific and substantive technical briefings for 2025.
To help provide increased clarity on what’s been shared about the 2025 caps to date, we’re going to share our projections for the coming year and revisit the math behind the 2024 caps. Keep in mind that these projections are internal estimates only, and they contain certain underlying assumptions due to continuing data availability limitations as of October 2, 2024.
Key Insights at a Glance
- In 2024, the target number of total approved study permits was 485,000. This figure will be reduced by 10% in 2025, down to 437,000.
- This 2025 cap target consists of three categories: extensions, buffers, and new study permit approvals.
- Postgraduate studies will be rolled into the cap for 2025, with 12% of the cap reserved for this study level. This means that undergraduate and college students will be competing with postgraduate students for a province’s application allotments.
What We Know About Canada’s 2025 International Student Caps So Far
On September 18, 2024, the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (IRCC) announced initial details about Canada’s planned international student caps for 2025. The main points related to the cap for 2025 are as follows:
- The cap is reduced from 2024 levels by 10% in 2025, meaning that study permits issued1 in 2025 will be capped at 437,000.
- It will include master’s and PhD degree students in the capped levels of study.
- K-12 (primary and secondary) students will remain exempt from the cap.
- The government will release greater details to individual provinces and territories in the coming weeks.
Since this announcement, the sector has been awaiting more technical information from IRCC to better understand the specific student visa impacts of the 2025 caps.2 While it’s tempting to just subtract 10% from the 2024 application allotments to project how provinces and institutions will be impacted in 2025, the reality is more complicated. This complication is because of two main factors: the calculations used for revised allotment totals in 2024, and the need to roll estimates for postgraduate studies into the 2025 figures (both of which we’ll cover below).
It’s also important to understand the terminology related to Canada’s international student cap. Specifically, there is 1) a target number of study permits, and 2) a cap on the number of applications the government will process based on the targeted number. In short, the government does not want the number of student visas to exceed a set amount, and their means to meeting this goal is limiting the number of applications they will process.
Projecting Canada’s 2025 International Student Cap
As noted, the Canadian government has announced a 2025 total approval target of 437,000 study permits, a reduction of 10% from the 2024 target.3
Here’s what a uniform 10% reduction would mean for the 2025 breakdown, assuming the three categories (extensions, buffer, and new approvals) are divided in a similar way as the 2024 outline:4
Rolling back adjustments that strived to achieve sustainable growth while mitigating sharp declines would risk further damaging Canada’s global attractiveness as a study abroad destination. As such, we’re not anticipating this will end up being the case. But, of course, the sector can’t be totally certain—and institutions can’t enact any strategic planning one way or the other—until the government releases its technical briefing.
Assuming those final adjustments aren’t rolled back, we’ve used the math behind the 2024 figures to project what we think the approval targets and application caps might look like for 2025. Note that these are estimates only and contain certain underlying assumptions due to continuing data availability limitations as of October 2, 2024 and ApplyBoard is not liable for accuracy of the projection:
The postgraduate level’s inclusion into the cap creates some of the largest complicating factors with projecting 2025. This requires making many assumptions about 2025’s possibilities. Here are the assumptions we’ve made that helped us arrive at our projections:
- Assumed 2025 will follow the math and logic outlined in 2024, and that the 10% reductions would apply across the board.
- Assumed each province would receive the same percentage of distributed target approvals as they did in 2024.5
- Assumed no changes were made to the final approval rate estimates in the 2024 outline.6
We want to reiterate here that the high number of assumptions made in this projection creates a significant margin of error. While these assumptions are based on the math behind the 2024 cap outline, any change the government makes to their calculations in 2025 could offset these projections to a wide degree.
The ApplyInsights team will continue to monitor and will produce updated estimations as more information becomes available. Register for our newsletter below to ensure you always have the most up to date analysis.
The Key Takeaway About Canada’s 2025 International Student Cap
With many details yet to be fully confirmed by IRCC, we likely won’t know the specific impact of these cap changes on student demand until early in 2025. What we know at this point is that rolling postgraduate studies into the cap should help institutions streamline applications and eliminate potential complications.7
However, it also means that undergraduate and college students will now be competing with postgraduate students for a province’s limited number of application allotments. While provinces must reserve 12% of their application allotments for postgraduate students, they can certainly go over that reservation. But doing so means taking away from the undergraduate level.8
Reducing the cap by 10% and reserving 12% of the new figure for postgraduate students—as was outlined in the government’s media briefing—would mean that application allotments for undergraduate and college students will drop, at minimum, by 21%. And should provinces allocate more than 12% of their applications for postgraduate students, the undergraduate drop would grow even higher.
This also means that we’re estimating about 65,000 study permit approvals will be set aside for the exempt K-12 level.
Understanding Canada’s International Student Cap – 2024 Overview
To fully understand the 2025 projections, let’s revisit the math behind the 2024 cap to see how it influenced the baseline for the 2025 caps.
While the application cap is what tangibly impacts institutions and students, the calculations behind it are based on the target number of student visas. So for the moment, let’s unpack how the government arrived at its approval target for 2024:
In 2024, the target number of total approved study permits was 485,000. This was based on a net-zero growth model, meaning that the number of students entering the country should not exceed the number of permits expiring in the given year.
The 2024 cap target number comprises three categories: extensions, buffers, and approvals. According to IRCC, about 20% of students apply for an extension each year and remain in the country. IRCC also set aside a buffer of about 5% in 2024, meaning new study permit approvals accounted for about 75% of the total target for 2024.
Understanding Canada’s International Student Cap – Targets for New Study Permit Approvals
That new study permit approvals category is why we can’t simply subtract 10% from the total overview figures in order to determine the 2025 caps, as outlined below:
The new approvals category consists of two sub-categories: non-capped study levels and capped study levels.9 Each sub-category comes with complicating factors for the 2025 cap.
For non-capped study levels, the K-12 and postgraduate estimates were set as one approval target in 2024. But with the postgraduate level becoming capped in 2025, this figure will need to be unraveled.
For capped study levels, things are especially muddied. The initial target for capped levels was 235,600 new approvals, or approximately 49% of the total net-zero 2024 goal. The government then adjusted this figure to account for provincial demographics, approval rates, and more.
To read more about these provincial adjustments, read our explanation of the 2024 student application cap allotments.
The final adjustments to the capped study levels target approvals were ultimately a good thing. They encouraged sustainable growth in provinces that saw allotments increase over 2023 levels, limited reductions to just 10% drops for most provinces that saw declines from 2023 levels, and accounted for each province’s historical approval rates.
But these positive changes also obscured the mathematical clarity. When the final adjusted target for capped levels is added to the non-capped levels, it results in a total of 420,000 new approvals for all study levels in 2024, 15% more than the 364,000 target approvals outlined in the overview. This also means that the combined number of study permits across the three main categories (541,000) exceeds the stated net-zero target (485,000):
Understanding Canada’s International Student Cap – Study Permit Volumes Fall Short of Cap in 2024
In the end, these mathematical issues are likely to have little impact on final study permit figures for 2024. This is because Canada is poised to fall well short of the outlined 2024 targets:
Using the latest data procured from IRCC, we’ve projected that about 231,000 student visas will be approved for all postsecondary studies in 2024. While the K-12 level will add to the total number of visas approved, we don’t expect the total number of new approvals to exceed 2019 levels by very much, if at all. The 2019 figure (256,000 total new approvals) would be 30% short of the initial new approval target, and 39% short of the revised new approval target. This is also on par with reports of institutions underperforming their PAL allocations by an estimated 30–50%.
In short, international student demand for a Canadian-based education has fallen to a degree that the mathematical contradictions between the total revised figures and the net-zero target for 2024 are irrelevant. But this contradiction could still have a very tangible impact on the 2025 targets.
Where Does Canada’s International Education Sector Go From Here?
As a sector, our work is now to rebuild confidence in Canada’s brand for prospective international students and demonstrate that Canada remains a welcoming destination for students looking for high-quality education and positive post-graduation outcomes.
It’s important to remember that destination markets don’t operate in a vacuum—we’ve seen time and again how policies in one country can push or pull student inflows from another. With Australia recently announcing their own international student cap, and the UK continuing to see falling demand following restrictions on student dependants, pathways exist for Canada’s international education sector to increase stability and sustainability in the coming years.
Institutions will have a larger role to play in order to realize those pathways. That’s because institutions play a pivotal role in ensuring students feel welcomed, safe, and supported during their study abroad journey. With changes coming to Canada’s PGWP program, institutions that can leverage strong degree-to-career pathways could gain some of the largest strategic advantages not only within Canada but also across the globe.
For more strategic advice and data-backed guidance on how your Canadian institution can maximize conversion rates and drive student diversity, please contact your Partner Relations Manager. Or, contact ApplyBoard’s Partner Relations team at schoolpartnerships@applyboard.com to start a conversation.
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FOOTNOTES:
1. It’s worth highlighting the contradicting terminology of “approvals” and “issued” between the April and September media releases. While the 2025 target was labeled “study permits issued,” the 2024 target (and the math outlined for that target) was for “study permit approvals. This is a point of confusion, as study permit approvals and study permits issued are two distinct parts of the student visa funnel. While it’s possible the government has changed the basis of their target, the math outlined in the April media release on the 2024 target is based on approvals data.
2. The terms student visa and study permit are generally used interchangeably for Canadian international students. Rather than student visas, Canada provides accepted international students with study permits, which allow those students to enrol in classes at Canadian institutions. When a student is accepted for a study permit, they are also usually provided with a visitor visa, which allows that student to enter Canada for their studies. For the purposes of this article, we’ll use the terms interchangeably.
3. It’s worth reiterating here the contradicting terminology as highlighted by footnote 1.
4. Note that these are estimates only, calculated based on the rounded percentage breakdown of IRCC’s 2024 cap outline, and contain certain underlying assumptions due to continuing data availability limitations as of October 2, 2024. ApplyBoard is not liable for accuracy of the projection.
5. For example, if a province received 20% of target approvals in 2024, we assumed it would receive an equal percentage in 2025.
6. The approval rate logic is ultimately how the approval rate target leads to the application allotment. Because postgraduate studies typically have a higher approval rate than undergraduate and college studies, it’s possible the estimated approval rates outlined for the 2024 cap could get raised for the 2025 cap. However, this would doubly hurt undergraduate students by a) reducing the overall number of application allotments available to provinces, and b) functioning as if undergraduate students have a higher approval rate than they’ve had in the past.
7. Exclusion of particular study levels in the 2024 cap may have had the potential to create further limits on capped study levels. For example, if K-12 and postgraduate student levels had far exceeded initial estimations, it is unclear if this could have necessitated stricter limits on undergraduate applications.
8. For example, if an institution is capped to 100 application allotments, they must reserve at least 12 of those for postgraduate students, leaving the remaining 88 for undergraduate students. However, if that institution used 20 allotments for postgraduate students, the undergraduate remainder would be reduced to 80.
9. Note that in the government’s briefing about the math of the caps, there appears to be a miscalculation related to the non-capped levels. The news release states that this number was 140,000. However, 140,000 does not work with the subsequent government calculations, so we’ve revised it for this article.
