UPEI says it will need more provincial cash if enrolment drops due to foreign student cap

UPEI officials are warning Island politicians that the university may need more provincial funding if the federal government's cap on new international students leads to lower enrolment. 

Speaking to a legislative committee Friday, interim president Greg Keefe outlined concerns about a dip in applications from students from outside Canada.

Keefe said post-secondary institutions in P.E.I. are worried the province may be limited in the number of attestations it can provide to international students. Obtaining a provincial attestation letter, a necessity the federal government introduced last month, is effectively the first step in a foreign student getting a permit to study in Canada. 

"It's typical that students apply to a number of universities when they're looking for opportunities," Keefe said.

If the P.E.I. government doesn't have enough attestations to grant, he said, "then we won't actually achieve the visa targets that we've actually been allocated." 

Keefe argues that if P.E.I. is limited in the number of attestation letters it can provide to potential students, the province will be disproportionately affected since there is only one university on the Island. In most other provinces, students have multiple universities to choose from. 

The worry for the Island's post-secondary institutions stems from Ottawa's decision to approve just 360,000 undergraduate study permits this year, a 35 per cent reduction from 2023, in an effort to help ease the nationwide housing crisis. 

UPEI has as many as 3,000 international students applying on a yearly basis, with only a small fraction actually accepted. 

While international students make up 37 per cent of the student body at UPEI, they contribute half of the university's total tuition revenue because they pay higher fees than students with Canadian citizenship. 

Keefe estimates that a 10 per cent drop in the number of international students taking a full four-year undergraduate degree would result in a $3 million budget shortfall for UPEI. 

"I thought it was important that [MLAs] be made aware of the potential implications for the province," he said. "Our estimates would be that over $100 million comes into the provincial economy as a result of having international students at UPEI and Holland College in particular."