Since the introduction of Canada’s international student cap at the start of 2024, the Canadian government has given special attention to protecting postgraduate studies.1 For 2024, the graduate level was exempt from the cap. And, while study permits for this level have been rolled into the 2025 and 2026 caps, 12% of the available allotments will be reserved for graduate students.
Despite these measures, demand for a graduate-level education in Canada has cooled since the introduction of the student cap. In fact, last month, we projected that graduate-level applications will drop 24% in 2024 compared to 2023.
So today, we’re diving deeper into the early impacts of Canada’s international student cap on new postgraduate student visas.2 We’ll look at the graduate visa trends for provinces, fields of study, and student populations. With the sector continuing to wait on more information about further restrictions to the 2025 cap, these insights can provide valuable starting points for strategic planning into next year.
Key Insights at a Glance
- International student visa applications for postgraduate studies in Canada fell by 23% for January through June (H1) 2024 over H1 2023.3
- The number of approved postgraduate study permits dropped by 20% or more in 8 of 10 provinces during this period.
- Postgraduate visa applications from Indian students were down 57% in H1 2024 compared to H1 2023.
- Study permit approvals were up for Chinese students (+4%) and Ghanaian students (+11%) over this period.
The Falling Demand for a Canadian Postgraduate Degree
Canada’s postgraduate level was growing at a steady rate prior to the implementation of the international student cap. In fact, graduate visa approvals grew nearly 100% from 2019 to 2023:
Approvals at the graduate level grew by 9% year-over-year in both 2022 and 2023. The master’s level drove this growth, up 13% and 11% in each respective year. The master’s level accounted for about 90% of graduate student approvals in both years. Approvals at the PhD level, on the other hand, had already been trending downward before the cap, dropping 15% year-over-year in 2022 and another 7% in 2023.
2024 will very likely see a sharp reversal of the overall graduate level trend, as only 17,500 graduate students had their study permit approved during the first half of the year (H1). Diving into the monthly data shows that demand cooled significantly:4
Graduate study permit approvals were down 35% in Jan–Jun 2024 compared to the first six months in 2023. Declining approval rates during this span—down from 66% in H1 2023 to 56% in H1 2024—contributed somewhat to the overall approval drop. But applications fell by 23% over the same period, much higher than the approval rate drop. This drop in applications ultimately shows that the lower approval numbers were more the result of falling demand rather than reduced student quality.
For comparison, approvals at the undergraduate level were down 46% in H1 2024 compared to H1 2023, while applications declined 38% over this period. Looking at just Q2 2024 (as institutions generally paused their new application intakes while provinces implemented new Provincial Application Letter processes in February and March), approvals and applications were down 52% and 47%, respectively.5 This means the graduate level declined at a slower rate than the undergraduate level, though this was to be expected given that the latter was subject to the 2024 student cap while the former was exempt.
IRCC approved 11,700 international students for a Canadian study permit in postgraduate studies in Q2 2024, down 35% from the 18,100 students during the same period of 2023.
The International Student Cap’s Early Impact on Postgraduate Studies in Every Canadian Province
The falling demand for a Canadian postgraduate degree impacted Canada’s provinces nearly across the board:
9 of Canada’s 10 provinces saw a double-digit decline in the number of postgraduate visa approvals in H1 2024 compared to the same period of the previous year. In fact, approvals dropped by 20% or more year-over-year in 8 of 10 provinces. Manitoba was the only province to see its postgraduate study level avoid significant declines, as the number of postgraduate study permit approvals grew by 8% in Jan–Jun 2024 compared to the first six months of 2023.
The early results of this widespread, cooled demand has led to a greater consolidation of postgraduate students in Ontario. Ontario accounted for 29% of all postgraduate approvals in H1 2023. But in H1 2024, this grew to 35%. Ontario’s proportional growth was mostly captured from British Columbia, which saw its market share of postgraduate student approvals fall from 34% in Jan–Jun 2023 to 28% in the same period in 2024.
The International Student Cap’s Early Impact on Postgraduate Fields of Study
The decline in new graduate study permits was felt across nearly every province. So, unsurprisingly, most postgraduate fields of study saw a demand drop in H1 2024. But not all fields of study experiences the same level of decline:
Arts, Social Science, and Humanities accounted for 10% of postgraduate approvals in H1 2023, but only 5% in H1 2024. That’s because just 900 international students were approved for a study permit for this field in H1 2024. Both approvals and applications were down over 60% compared to H1 2023, suggesting that the field is experiencing a cooling of demand rather than lower student quality—if approvals were down due to declining quality, application volumes would have remained at similar levels as the previous year.
The proportion of graduate visa approvals for business and management programs dropped three percentage points from Jan–Jun 2023 to Jan–Jun 2024, while engineering was down two percentage points over this period. Computing and IT rose by one percentage point, while the Other field accounted for the bulk of gains.6
Health care and STEM will be the highest in-demand sectors for jobs in the next decade, and ApplyBoardian students are shifting their demand toward these fields.
The Student Populations Pursuing Postgraduate Studies in Canada in 2024
International student diversity has always been critical. Diversity helps institutions mitigate against potential inflow downturns due to geopolitical tensions, while also broadens the student experience through the inclusion of multiple perspectives.
The downward trends in H1 2024 demonstrate the importance of diversity:
Through the first half of 2024, Canada’s postgraduate level saw a significant drop in demand from Indian students. Graduate study permit applications from Indian students were down 57% in H1 2024 compared to H1 2023, even as approval rates rose to 87% compared to 77% over the same period. As a result, the overall number of postgraduate approvals for Indian students was halved from Jan–Jun 2023 to Jan–Jun 2024.
The Indian student population was not the only one in which demand for a Canadian postgraduate education cooled. IRCC approved at least 35% fewer study permits for Iranian (-39%), Nigerian (-59%), Algerian (50%), and Pakistani (-35%) postgraduate students in the first half of 2024 vs. the first half of 2023. Approvals for students from France (-42%) and the US (-20%) also fell significantly year-over-year, even as students from these two western countries continued to see approval rates exceeding 90%.
On a positive note, there were some student populations bucking the downward trend. Study permit approvals for graduate students from China (+4%), Ghana (+11%), the Philippines (+15%), Colombia (+5%), and Brazil (+17%) all rose in H1 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.
Read more about how Ghana is poised to help drive increased international student diversity across the globe.
Key Takeaways Leading into 2025
It’s important to remember that destination markets don’t operate in a vacuum—policies in one country can push or pull students from another. For instance, four in every five respondents in our latest Recruitment Pulse Survey agreed that Canada’s decisions to limit study permit applications made it a less desirable destination. This resulted in the US rising to the most attractive study destination among respondents for the first time ever in the survey’s history.
With this in mind, Canadian institutions will play a critical role as the sector works toward rebuilding prospective student confidence in Canada’s international education brand. That’s because institutions are pivotal to ensuring students feel welcomed, safe, and supported both during their studies and in their degree-to-career pathway. With prospective students being exposed to more negative news stories about Canada’s international education brand than ever before, creating positive and successful study environments and experiences will be the surest way to counter the rises in negative global sentiment.
Canada will continue to have one of the strongest post-graduation work programs in the world in 2025, and the recent changes to its PGWP program highlighted that both the master’s and doctoral levels will have no additional field of study requirement. This is in addition to IRCC’s stated recognition of the benefits that graduate students bring to Canada’s labour market. Communicating these positive factors to prospective students could be the difference maker that gives them the confidence that they’ll receive a positive experience during and after their studies in Canada.
We also think the inclusion of postgraduate studies into the cap should help institutions streamline applications and reduce potential complications.7 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. For the purposes of this article, postgraduate studies refers only to the Master’s and PhD graduate levels.
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. All data is sourced from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) unless otherwise noted.
4. Undergraduate applications were paused for most of February and March as provinces worked toward implementing Provincial Application Letters (PALs) processes. But postgraduate studies should not have been affected by this pause, as these students were exempt from requiring PALs.
5. For just Q2 2024, approvals for the graduate level fell 35% year-over-year, while applications dropped 25%.
6. The Other category includes some specific fields of study—including agriculture, law, and the trades—as well as IRCC’s “Other” designation, which is used when a chosen field of study is not listed in the selection.
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 postgraduate student levels had far exceeded initial estimations, it is unclear if this could have necessitated stricter limits on undergraduate applications.
