UBC Okanagan is tightening its belt as international student enrollment continues to plummet.
At the university’s senate meeting last month, UBCO president Benoit-Antoine Bacon says it has gotten difficult in recent years to attract “the best and brightest” international students.
He pointed to delays international students have encountered in obtaining visas, diplomatic tensions with India and federal caps placed on the sector last year.
“Sending the signal that Canada may not be as welcoming as it once was — international students speak to one another and they have a lot of choice,” Bacon said.
International students are sought after by universities due to the much higher tuition fees they pay compared to domestic students. While tuition varies by programs and course load, a year of full-course load in a science undergraduate program costs just under $6,000 for domestic students, while an international student pays more than $48,000.
“It’s not trivial, it's a $40 billion a year industry, it's significant for our economy,” Bacon said.
Last month, the federal government announced it would further reduce its cap on international study visas in Canada by 10 per cent, citing pressure on housing and social services from the growing number of foreign students in the country.
“In a funny way, the cap won’t really matter because everybody is down more than that, but again, it sends the signal that we are not a welcoming country for international students,” Bacon told the senate.
He said UBC has been lobbying Ottawa “to make sure that the federal government understands what kind of damage they are causing to the sector.”
“We need to stabilize before anything else is envisioned,” he added.
“It has an academic impact, it has a financial impact.”
Bacon suggested that “a lot” of Canadian universities grew accustomed to the windfall of revenue as international students came in droves to Canada between 2015 and 2021.
“We may never see those budgets again. We are all going to have to adjust to different degrees to address a revenue shortfall.”
He said UBC remains in a strong fiscal position, but will have to exercise “caution” in the next cycles.
“This is perhaps especially true here in the Okanagan.”
The senate heard international student enrolments have been softening in the Okanagan for two years. While this year’s numbers will remain in flux until the end of November, international enrolment has fallen by almost half from its peak.
As of Sept. 26, the school was still 25 per cent to 30 per cent short of “very conservative” targets set for this year.
The exact financial impact of all this will take some time to shake out, said Lesley Cormack, UBCO principal and deputy vice chancellor.
“It’s extremely important as we think about the belt-tightening that we need to do, to make sure that we prioritize our academic mission,” she said.
“There are going to be some hard questions about whether there are ... things that we perhaps can’t do right now,” Cormack continued. “There will definitely be impacts.”
She said the university would be laser focused on not cutting back on things that help attract students, both domestic and international.
Bacon noted as revenues rise and fall at UBC Okanagan, its mission does not change academically.
At the end of the fiscal year ending in March 2024, the school projected a $16 million deficit due in part to decreased international student tuition and inflation. That forced UBCO to dip heavily into reserve funds, using $15.9 million of its $64.5 million reserve it started with back in April 2023.
Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops is also bracing for a hit to its books as international enrollment falls there as well.
