It gave the look of a door had opened.
Providence University College and Theological Seminary in Manitoba began an associate’s degree program that may very well be marketed to international students. To president Kenton Anderson’s delight, the two-year degree attracted a big variety of applicants desirous to study in Canada. Several hundred students enrolled.
For the private evangelical school, that generated significant revenue and helped further fulfill the mission of spreading the gospel around the globe.
Providence made plans to grow this system—could they attract 500 international students? 600? 700?—and acquired an apartment constructing in nearby Winnipeg to offer increased student housing.
Then, a single government decision closed that door.
Canada’s federal government announced latest restrictions on undergraduate international students in January 2024. When the foundations take effect this fall, the overall number can be reduced by about 35 percent.
Providence was anticipating several hundred latest international students. Now, when the semester starts the primary week of September, the varsity will only greet about 20.
“It’s many tens of millions of dollars of revenue just gone,” Anderson told CT. “And, in fact, as a personal tuition-funded Christian school, it’s not like we have now quite a lot of that cash lying around.”
According to the Canadian government, there are several reasons to cut back the variety of international students at Canadian colleges and universities. Officials said they were concerned that lax admissions were diminishing the standard of the country’s education.
“We wish to be certain that international students are successful and to tackle the problems that make students vulnerable and hurt the integrity of the International Student Program,” Julie Lafortune, a spokeswoman for the department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, told CT in an email.
The government was also concerned concerning the strain that the influx of internationals puts on the already stressed housing market. Many cities across Canada have seen housing costs skyrocket in recent times. Experts estimate 5.8 million latest homes would need to be built by 2030 to bring prices back right down to reasonably priced levels.
“While international students will not be accountable for the challenges that communities are facing in housing, health care, and other services, the expansion within the variety of international students is unsustainable and has added significant demand for services that every one Canadians must have the option to access,” Lafortune said.
The latest rule sets limits on international students for every province. The provinces will then determine the allocation of that limited number of scholars—what number of will go to at least one school, what number of to a different.
In Manitoba, the federal government decided to prioritize permits for international students attending public universities. Providence was allowed only a small amount.
Anderson said the combined decisions of the federal and provincial governments were enough to threaten the existence of the evangelical university. But Providence isn’t alone, he said. Many institutions of upper education are going to suffer.
“That was a highly regarded move politically for them to make, but it surely was a little bit of a blunt instrument,” he said. “It just sort of like hit everybody.”
Kingswood University in New Brunswick will notice the hit.
In its 80-year history, the Methodist-affiliated school has come to depend on the flow of enrollments from abroad. Sometimes as much as 40 percent of the scholar body has been international. The majority have come from the United States, but many have come from further away as well, reflecting Kingswood’s Methodist ties and its missions-minded identity.
“It’s not possible for us to do what we were chosen and funded to do for this reason latest rule,” president Stephen Lennox told CT.
In the agricultural community of Sussex, where the university is positioned, housing shouldn’t be a significant problem, in accordance with Lennox. He understands the federal government concerns about education quality and housing stock, but neither issue actually applies to Kingswood. So the rule doesn’t solve anything but does seriously hurt the varsity.
Christian Higher Education Canada sent a letter to Marc Miller, minister of immigration, refugees, and citizenship, asking him to reconsider. Lennox, who’s on the board, is one in all the leaders at 22 Christian schools in Canada who signed the appeal.
“Our schools provide theological education, preparing individuals to fill positions as pastors and other religious professionals,” it said. “Limiting the variety of international students restricts us in our mission to assist alleviate the pastoral leadership deficit in churches around the globe.”
One major issue that may impact Kingswood is the change to the means of admitting US students. Americans who want to check at evangelical schools in Canada will find it’s a bit harder than it was before.
“They’ve all the time been allowed to enter by a door that’s a little bit easier to go through than a typical international student. Now all of them have to come back through the identical door,” Lennox said. “A student two hours away in Calais, Maine, has to undergo the identical process that somebody coming from Swaziland has to undergo. And to me, that just doesn’t appear to make any sense.”
Some evangelical schools in Canada have seen problems with housing. The government concern about people having places to live is relevant to their context. But they were already determining solutions.
“Finding housing in Moncton is usually a challenge,” said Darrell Nevers, marketing and communications manager at Crandall University, a faculty related to the Canadian Baptists of Atlantic Canada. “However, our student network is robust; most students can find suitable housing before arrival or soon afterwards. We also work with community partners to assist students find protected and reasonably priced housing.”
Crandall, which can be in New Brunswick, typically recruits between 400 and 450 international students every year to the Moncton campus—just below 50 percent of overall enrollment. The largest numbers of scholars come from India, Nigeria, Columbia, Ghana, and Bangladesh. The majority are enrolled in graduate programs, nonetheless, that are exempt from the brand new restrictions for now.
That reduces the impact but doesn’t entirely eliminate it. Crandall is welcoming only 8–12 international undergraduate students this fall but 140 additional students are enrolled in graduate programs.
“While we’re actually concerned that these changes will impact our undergraduate student enrollment, we imagine that our provincial government has been incredibly fair in how they’ve allocated numbers to New Brunswick schools,” Nevers said.
Faced with the brand new restrictions, some universities have chosen to pivot.
“We feel just like the Lord has definitely closed a door for this season. We hope that it opens again, either with a change of presidency or simply because they see there may be a greater way. But we also feel like, ‘Hey, the Lord wants us to exist. What other options are on the market for us?’” said Lennox at Kingswood.
Currently, the varsity has plans to supply a one-year master’s in leadership starting in January 2025. Those students can be exempt from the brand new restriction, and Kingswood hopes to recruit enough of them to offset the losses in undergraduate enrollment. Since it’s a one-year program as a substitute of a four-year program, nonetheless, they may need to recruit at a faster rate.
Providence has also taken steps to expand its graduate offerings. Anderson said it was incredibly difficult for faculty and staff to get a latest program in place as quickly as they needed to, but it surely was essential to the longer term of the institution.
“It was just one in all those things where you do or die, so to talk,” the president said. “We’re doing quite a lot of things to strengthen our work and our sustainability as an establishment and what we provide to the dominion of God, to the church, to our communities.”
New graduate programs will bring about 300 international students to Providence this fall. That alleviates immediate financial concerns, but school officials have a latest awareness of how easily that would change. Recruiting more international students now not looks like a key piece of a solid plan for sustainability.
“The international work was good in that it was helping buy time, essentially,” Anderson said. “Now, we’re going to need to dig a little bit deeper.”
