Incoming UFV president predicts plunging international student enrolment

Reality may be blowing a multi-million-dollar hole in the University of the Fraser Valley’s optimistic budget plans.

This spring the university passed a budget that avoided the large-scale cost-cutting planned at other BC universities reliant on international student tuition. But now UFV administrators are now warning of plunging foreign student numbers, and facing the prospect that they too will no longer be able to count on international tuition to balance their books.

A policy reversal

Over the last two decades, provincial and federal governments had encouraged universities to recruit large numbers of international students. Those students pay far higher tuition fees, and revenue from foreign learners has increasingly subsidized Canada’s post-secondary system and reduced the amount of money governments themselves need to send to universities.

Last year, in a policy reversal with massive implications for Canadian post-secondary students and institutions, the federal government capped the number of international study permits issued over the coming years. The move was intended to reduce pressure on the housing market and health care system, while focusing on colleges that had been built on the backs of steep tuition fees charged to foreign students.

Although foreign learners accounted for only about one-fifth of UFV’s student body last year, their tuition fees were the second-largest source of university revenue, behind only government operating grants. International student fees contributed $50 million to the university budget last year, while tuition from domestic students contributed only $37 million.)

The federal government’s policy reversal led some BC universities and colleges to budget for a significant drop in international student fees. Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops predicted that it would lose more than $16 million in revenue. Its administrators said that international enrolment could be halved over the next five years.

UFV, though, passed a budget this spring without the job cuts forecast by many of its peer institutions. Its budget did acknowledge that policy changes could make it more difficult for prospective international students to come to Canada, but the university still predicted only a modest 9% decrease in student count. And with a 5% tuition hike planned for new foreign students, the university forecast only a 2.4% ($1.2 million) decline in revenue from international tuition fees.

But in a new memo released online, UFV’s academic vice-president James Mandigo—who will take over as president this month—warned that the number of new incoming students has plunged due to the federal government’s policy changes.

Across the university, the total number of students is expected to drop by 23%, the memo said. (Domestic student enrolment is expected to increase by 0.8%.)

The memo doesn’t discuss the implications on UFV finances, noting only that the university has already approved its 2025/26 budget.

But the implications would be profound long-term, if international enrolment remains that low—or declines further. The figures released by Mandigo are for individual students and don’t factor in their average course load. But a 23% decline in foreign students will inevitably leave UFV without millions of dollars of revenue—and some classes and departments without hundreds of students.

In a statement provided to The Current by email, Mandigo said UFV’s operating budget had anticipated a drop in international students, but hadn’t factored in “the low approval rate … of study permit applications across Canada.”

Mandigo wrote that UFV is “monitoring the financial impact” of enrolment figures, but “not forecasting in-year job cuts to mitigate any budgetary shortfalls.”

The decrease in international students will be felt differently across the university. In the university’s business and computing department, international learners outnumbered domestic students. International students also comprised a large share of visual arts and communications students. By contrast, trades, education, and nursing programs were comprised almost exclusively of domestic students.