Student enrolment hard hit

International students have historically made up a large portion of Okanagan College's student body but change is afoot, raising concerns about how that will shake out both at the campuses across the valley and the communities that surround them.

On Nov. 1, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada implemented changes to the post-graduation work permit program, that will mean graduates from public colleges will only qualify for a permit if they have studied in fields related to occupations in which the federal government has identified labour shortages.

That means university graduates with bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degrees are now still eligible for a work permit of up to three years, regardless of their field of study, but college program grads are less likely to fall into that category.

Only eight per cent of programs at Okanagan College will now offer graduates a road to a work permit, VP of enrolment and college relations Jenn Goodwin at Okanagan College said.

“It really means that international students, if they are still coming to Canada, are incentivized to go to university because there's more of programming that would qualify them for permits,” Goodwin said.

That presents a challenge for the college, which has already seen a reduction of about 50 per cent of its new international student population this fall, and are anticipating a further drop of about 70 per cent of new international students this year.

“We have about 2,000 international students overall in a year,” Goodwin said.

"That's where we were last year in 2023 and we're looking at now, within the next year and a half, a drop of up to 80 per cent. We might be in a situation, in a year and a half time, where we've got a few hundred international students.”

The staggered decline is because the programs offered at the college are two to four years in length, and students who were already registered in a program before Nov. 1 are still eligible, under previous guidelines, to access a work permit.

Nonetheless, she said, it’s a "significant impact.”

The changes are part of Canada walking back the loosening of temporary foreign worker restrictions that were eased during the post-COVID labour shortage.

In September, the federal government announced plans to reduce the number of temporary residents in the country from 6.2 per cent to five per cent by 2027. This includes TFWs and the number of student visas.

At the college there will have to be some cutbacks, though Goodwin stressed that there will be no extreme measures taken immediately and the focus right now is on January 2025.

“For winter 2025 there will be a small number of part time contract faculty positions where the contracts are canceled,” she said.

"We call them term faculty positions (and there are) 10.”

Beyond that, it’s unclear.

"We plan out and map out courses in sections about a year and a half in advance, and then a couple months before the semester, we look at our registration for enrollment and determine (whether) we need to add more sections to accommodate areas where there are more student demands, or do we need to reduce sections,” she said.

There are some sections where there will be reductions and that will mean, on a student-level, fewer options for scheduling.

For the community outside the college there’s some concern about how cutbacks will affect the job market, particularly in the Okanagan where so many programs are targeted at fulfilling employment needs within local industries.

"Certainly, the programs that have been prioritized or identified as eligible for post graduate work permits are important programs, including such as computer information systems, for example,” Goodwin said.

“Those are that is a high needs area.”

Government changes don't reflect the regional or local needs of Okanagan communities, she said.

"We know from current students or from alumni or employers, in the community where OC has campuses, that a wide range of our programs are really valuable, really critical to our local economies,” she said, listing the hospitality industry, the health and education systems as just a few areas it reaches.

“We're concerned about that, because that's part of the role that the college plays, is providing that really necessary education and training for important professions in our community."

UBC Okanagan has also reported they are belt-tightening in response to falling international enrolment.