CBC News has reported that the province’s minister for advanced education gave the details during an event in Halifax on March 4.
Brian Wong did not detail how the applications would be divided between public and private institutions but said his department is working on a model that is “fair”.
“Previous to this year, schools could submit really an infinite number of applications of international students to the federal government and sometimes the success rate of those going through for some schools was on average with the rest of Canada, and sometimes they were very low,” he said, according to the news report.
Based on normal approval rates, the province can expect 7,740 international undergraduate students in the next year.
“We want to make sure that all schools, all designated learning institutions have a good opportunity to be successful.”
The federal government announced a 360,000 country-wide cap on international students at the undergraduate level for the next two years in January.
Earlier this week, British Columbia said had been allocated 83,000 undergraduate study permit applications for the next year, with the expectation that 50,000 would be approved.
The split between public and private (53% public vs 47% private) left some surprised at the number of allocations going to private institutions.
“We want to make sure that all designated learning institutions have a good opportunity to be successful”
The numbers given by the minister are slightly lower than the figures estimated for the province by ApplyBoard.
Some institutions are said to be considering recruiting students from countries with historically better visa approvals to mitigate any drops in international student numbers – which could result in the final cap being higher than the 360,000 government target.
However, it is not clear whether IRCC will simply change its operations if the usual 60% study permit approval rate is surpassed.
A total 605,000 provincial attestation letters – used to implement the federal cap – will be issued by federal government to post-secondary institutions across the country in the next year.
The minister added that the department is negotiating bilateral funding arrangements with universities in the province.
All 10 of the province’s institutions have been told to develop international student sustainability plans outlining how students will be recruited, housed and connected to the labour market, The PIE has previously reported.
Institutions will be required to have on-campus housing for 15% of full-time students. Some – including Dalhousie University and Cape Breton University (which is seeking to reduce its overall enrolment to 7,000 students within four years) – do not yet have enough accommodation on their campuses.
CBU has previously complained that it has been left out of any consultation or negotiation processes, after Nova Scotia said it would hike fees for first-year international undergraduate students at eight institutions by 9%.
The housing shortages have “nothing to do with the international students”, Wong said this week.
“They came to a school to get an education. A lot of them want to become part of that community.”
