Thompson Rivers University has seen a dramatic drop in international admissions compared to last year, with applications coming from India down 76 per cent.
In a report from TRU’s president, Brett Fairbairn, domestic applications have increased by two per cent to 2,544 while admissions have risen by one per cent to 1,279.
Compared to last year, international applications have fallen from a 34 per cent decrease in January to 40 per cent this month, and admissions fell from 24 per cent to 36 per cent.
In his report, Fairbairn said the decline in international figures is attributed to both deliberate measures to reduce international student numbers and changes to “study permit processing” by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada.
Prior to recently announced international student permit caps form the federal government, Fairbairn said the decreases were due to efforts to keep TRU’s international headcount on its Kamloops campus to around 4,500.
China has since become the university’s leading source of international applications, seeing a three per cent rise over last year.
While the university said last fall that India was the source for 44 per cent of total international students, applications from India have fallen 76 per cent.
In fact, admissions have decreased across nearly all major source countries — aside from Nepal and Ghana which have seen a 145 per cent and eight per cent increase respectively.
The top three countries for international admissions are currently Iran, Nigeria and India — each of which are contributing approximately 15 per cent of total international admissions.
Fairbairn said the data shows “a shift toward a more diversified international student body compared to last year when India dominated the admissions statistics.”
In January, the university received just over 4,600 international students on-campus out of around 9,600 total on-campus students.
Fairbairn’s report will be presented to the university’s senate on Friday.
