The number of foreign students enrolling at a public post-secondary school in Canada rose drastically from 142,200 to 388,800 between 2010 and 2019. There are now over 800,000 international students enrolled at all academic levels.
There may be worries regarding domestic student enrollment in Canada as a result of this big influx of international students. Will Canadian students suffer as a result of this, and may this further negatively effect international student registration in the future?
According to a Statistics Canada analysis, the contrary appears to be true. Researchers Youjin Choi and Feng Hou discovered a favorable association between domestic and international student enrolment at Canadian schools through a study of post-secondary enrolment patterns between domestic and international students, along with some intriguing results along the road.
The study examined the enrollment figures of domestic and international students in public post-secondary institutions in Canada, with a focus on programs related to Business, Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences, and Education (BHASE) and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Programs linked to commerce, services, natural resources, law, and conservation were also included in the BHASE portfolio for the purposes of this research.
After adjusting for a variety of other variables known as “institution characteristics and time effects,” such as a change in curriculum, admissions requirements, enrollment capacity, etc., the study sought to determine the effect of foreign student enrollment on domestic students.
Finally, the analysis discovered a statistically significant positive association between the enrolment of domestic and international students in BHASE graduate programs, but no link between the two groups’ enrollment at the graduate level in STEM programs.
These findings are particularly noteworthy in light of the general trend of a slight decline in the number of domestic Canadian students enrolled in post-secondary education, while enrollments of international students at the same level of study have nearly tripled over the same ten-year period. In actuality, more international students are enrolling in all of the programs and educational levels that this survey examined.
How come this might be the case?
The study presents a theory to explain the positive link between domestic and international student enrollment in STEM and BHASE sectors, even if it is unable to provide much insight into the logic behind the results.
This is known as the “cross-subsidization” argument, which holds that Canadian educational institutions may use the fees paid to foreign students—which are often far greater than those paid to domestic students—to offset the expense of teaching domestic students. According to this argument, since overseas students pay higher tuition for the same educational services, educational institutions have more money to reinvest in the education of Canadian students. Crucially, even though the study could not discover any proof of this cross-subsidization, the results held up when covariates were taken into account.
Historical data provides additional support for cross-subsidization. The average tuition prices for overseas undergraduate students climbed by 90.2% between 2010 and 2019 (from $16,842 to $32,039 CAD); local student fees increased by just 27% during the same period (from $5,146 to $6,580 CAD). The rates at which both of these tuition increases occurred much outpaced the 13% increase in prices of goods and services that occurred during this time due to inflation (as indicated by the Consumer Price Index).
If the patterns in this study continue, it does not appear probable that the enrolment of local students will have an effect on that of foreign students, or vice versa, based on the data available. It is important to acknowledge the limitations of this study.
restrictions on the research
Although the study is valuable in adding to the body of knowledge on the subject, it has limitations that should be taken into account, especially in light of Canada’s demographics.
For example, the results examined could only be pertinent to the particular time frame examined in the study and might be impacted by changes in the population that took place in the 2010s. Notably, according to Statistics Canada, the number of young adults (18 to 24) decreased from 462,009 in 2008 to 410,851 in 2021. The main cause of this fall was a drop in births during the 1990s and the first part of the 2000s (Statistics Canada, 2022f). Due to the decline in domestic demand for postsecondary education, there was a chance for overseas students to occupy these spaces.
Since domestic student enrolments receive subsidies from provincial financing, the reduction of provincial funding in departmental budgets may also have had a role in the decline in enrollment. Postsecondary educational institutions may have required to raise their enrollment of foreign students as a result of these demographic shifts, but they were able to do so without lowering their domestic enrollment.
For the next ten years, however, demographic trends are expected to be the reverse. The number of young adults (18 to 24 years old) started to rise in 2021 and is expected to expand quickly until 2026, when it will have surpassed the 2008 peak. If Canadian young adults continue to have a predisposition to pursue higher education, this demographic shift might result in a rise in the country’s demand for postsecondary education over the course of the next 10 years. As a result, in the upcoming ten years, there may be a change in the fundamental link between variations in the enrolment of local and foreign students.
