How many applications will provinces and schools be allotted to send to IRCC in 2024? And which jurisdictions will have room to accept more students in 2024 to help offset the locations which are certain to decline?
Canada’s international student cap is a significant shift in policy from the previous decade. The shift coincides with a wave of policy changes across major English-speaking destinations, but the suddenness of its implementation has left many students, counsellors, and institution leaders unclear on what’s changed and how the landscape will look moving forward.
To help, we’re sharing ApplyBoard’s internal projections on what Canada’s new application cap means for international students as well as Canada’s provinces and territories. These are internal estimates only, containing certain underlying assumptions due to continuing data availability limitations regarding the allocation of provincial attestation letters and associated processes as of February 9, 2024.
Key Insights at a Glance
- The Canadian government will process no more than 606,250 new study permit applications in 2024.
- IRCC expects the cap will result in 360,000 approvals for 2024, meaning an estimated approval rate of 59.4%. Using this rate alongside our projected application caps for each Canadian province and territory, we think 11 of Canada’s 13 study jurisdictions will have room to grow their number of approvals.
- Quebec, Alberta, and Newfoundland and Labrador could grow substantially, but approval rates will have a significant impact on whether governments and institutions hit their targets.
Canada’s New Application Cap for International Students
When IRCC initially announced its new policies for international education in Canada, the key takeaway was that approximately 360,000 study permit applications would be approved for 2024, a decrease of 35% from 2023. This led many sector stakeholders to believe that the cap and the expected 360,000 approvals were one and the same.
New information from IRCC indicates that, in actuality, the government has capped the number of new applications it will process in 2024. The government intends to process no more than 606,250 new study permit applications in 2024. They have also said that K-12, master’s, and doctoral applications fall outside of the scope of these changes, meaning these study levels should be exempt from the application cap.
For the affected study levels—meaning every study level except K-12, master’s, and doctoral—Canada processed over 669,000 applications in 2023. In theory, this means the new cap for affected study levels in 2024 could reduce application totals by as little as 9%. In practice, however, Canada is highly unlikely to reach its cap in 2024, as several jurisdictions would need to see a massive increase in student interest, as well as increased seat capacity to welcome such an influx.
Canadian provinces and territories will receive an application allotment weighted by the size of their population. The table below shows ApplyBoard’s internal projections for this weighted cap system. Note that these projections for 2024 are estimates only calculated with available 2023 IRCC data and Statistics Canada Q4 population data, and contain certain underlying assumptions due to continuing data availability limitations as of February 9, 2024. ApplyBoard is not liable for accuracy of the projections:2
Note that some of the actual cap allocations have been released since the publication of these projections, made on February 9. Some of the confirmed numbers have come in lower than expected (such as for New Brunswick). We will release an update in full as more of the confirmed application allotments become available.
We expect Ontario, British Columbia, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick to be the jurisdictions most negatively impacted by the application cap. Based on these projections, for Canada as a whole to come close to reaching its processing cap, a number of provinces—in particular Quebec and Alberta, but also Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba—would have to see significant gains in student interest (and have the capacity to welcome those students). While this is certainly possible, it will require strategic coordination and agility among sector stakeholders to inform students of the many world-class programs these locations offer.
How Approval Volumes Might Change for the Affected Study Levels
Using our cap projections and historical study permit approval rates, we can also estimate how many additional study permit approvals provinces and territories have room for in 2024. Again, projections for 2024 are estimates only calculated with available 2023 IRCC data and Statistics Canada Q4 population data, and contain certain underlying assumptions due to continuing data availability limitations as of February 9, 2024. ApplyBoard is not liable for accuracy of the projections:
The approval room is the difference between (a) the number of new study permits approved for students to study in a given jurisdiction in 2023 and (b) ApplyBoard’s projection for the number of new study permits approved for that jurisdiction if it hits its application cap in 2024. We’ve calculated two different approval room values. The first is based on a flat 59.4% approval rate, to align with the government’s 360,000 approval estimate against the application cap. This would be a small increase from last year’s approval rate of 57.2% for the affected study levels. The second approval room value is based on each jurisdiction’s three-year approval rate average from 2021 to 2023 for the affected study levels.
Some jurisdictions have work to do to achieve a 59.4% approval rate, but we think it’s likely most will see significant approval rate gains. That’s because weaker applications will be more likely to be filtered out before they reach IRCC, as institutions will likely be more stringent with their application allotments. It’s also important to note that approval rate differentials between provinces and territories reflect many factors, such as average applicant citizenship, age, and study level choice.
Based on a 59.4% approval rate and our projected application caps, we think 11 of Canada’s 13 jurisdictions will have room to grow their number of approvals. Quebec, Alberta, and Newfoundland and Labrador have room to nearly double the number of approvals each province had in 2023, though Quebec would need a considerable approval rate increase to achieve this. However, we should add an important caveat here: projected approval room does not take into account seat availability. It remains to be seen how IRCC will balance allotments based on population against a study jurisdiction’s seating capacity.
Provincial Attestation Letters Pause Application Processing
Another reason we believe Canada is unlikely to reach its application cap for the affected study levels in 2024 is because application processing is effectively paused while provinces and territories create and implement systems for provincial attestation letters.3 Affected students are now required to include a provincial attestation letter with their study permit application.
As HESA’s Alex Usher aptly described, the government is now asking students to go through three separate processes (institutional, provincial, federal) instead of just two (institutional, federal) in order to make it to Canada. But students cannot fulfill this extra step until provinces and territories develop and implement the technological processes.
The federal government has given the provinces and territories until March 31 to create an attestation letter system, meaning students could be in limbo for more than two months. These are real individuals who will be experiencing unknowable stress due to the uncertainty.
As such, there are two distinct but connected ways that Canada’s reputation on the global stage is likely to suffer. In the short term, students will grow frustrated waiting for the new attestation letter systems, and may decide to study elsewhere. Long-term, students could feel disregarded and unwelcome due to the new, more arduous system and the implementation of a cap, leading them to apply to destinations with more favourable policies.
Conversations with our recruitment partners on the ground have said a high percentage of students are already considering looking elsewhere. These changes have caused an as-yet-unknown level of damage to Canada’s global reputation as a preferred study destination that will have impacts for years. Australia, the US, and the UK have experienced a similar fate in the past few years, with many still in the process of recovering.
To help expedite the implementation of provincial attestation letters, ApplyBoard has offered to help provinces and territories build the technology for free.
It’s also worth highlighting that once the attestation letter systems are up and running, the federal government will likely be flooded by applications that were backlogged during the processing pause. It will be imperative for IRCC to ensure adequate resourcing to account for this and to avoid a significant decline in processing times.
Key Takeaways
We cannot stress enough that many questions remain about the policy shifts, and that our estimates could change as new information is released.
For instance, one of many pressing logistical questions, as Alex Usher raised, revolves around students who receive multiple letters of acceptance (LOAs). When a student receives an LOA from schools in different jurisdictions, will provinces and schools be informed when a student chooses where to study? Without a process in place to account for this common scenario, institutions and provinces will think they’ve reached their allocated cap but in fact have room to spare. This will have a dampening effect on their applications-to-enrollment conversions. But any system in place will also have to take into account privacy regulations.
As the government provides more information, we’ll be better able to refine and adjust our predictions for the sector. For now, the key takeaways for stakeholders are that the cap in place is on applications processed by IRCC rather than approvals themselves, and that approval rates will be a key determining factor for whether or not provinces with room to grow—such as Quebec, Alberta, and Newfoundland and Labrador—are able to reach their allotted application cap for the affected study levels.
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FOOTNOTES:
1. As per the government notice: “As stipulated in these Instructions, certain categories of study permit applications are excluded from the conditions set out in these Instructions and the associated application cap established by these Instructions…. These Instructions apply to applications for a study permit made under the student class, referred to in Part 12 of the Regulations, except for:
- study permit applications referred to in subsection 215(1) of the Regulations;
- study permit applications referred to in subsection 215(2) of the Regulations;
- study permit applications from foreign nationals planning to study at the primary school or secondary school level; or
- study permit applications from foreign nationals planning to study in a graduate degree program at the master’s or doctorate level.”
2. To calculate our projections, we multiplied each jurisdiction’s proportion of the population by the 606,250 application cap. This gave us a projected application allotment for each jurisdiction. We then subtracted this allotment by each jurisdiction’s 2023 weighted application total to find the difference. The weighted application total accounts for the 9,700 applications with an unknown study location by determining each jurisdiction’s percentage of all known application locations, multiplying this percentage by 9,700, and adding the result to the jurisdiction’s known application count. Note that the population count included temporary residents, as this was the calculation that best aligned with the reported number of allotments for BC.
3. Although it’s been called a “provincial attestation letter,” an attestation letter will also be required of students who want to study in one of Canada’s territories as well.
