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The 181,590 applications — of which 32,579 are for master’s and doctoral programs — are expected to lead to about 116,740 approved study permits, depending on who ultimately enrols and how many immigration officials approve.

Public colleges and universities will continue to receive the bulk of the applications — 96 per cent — with four per cent set aside for private post-secondary schools.

Career colleges in the province are again frozen out. It was largely their programs, run in partnership with public colleges, that led to widespread criticism of ballooning enrolment and questionable quality, while also contributing to the housing crunch.

Public colleges had come to rely on the lucrative partnerships and the loss of them has led to massive cutbacks at some.

Centennial College, which had no such partnerships but is also now reeling from the loss of tuition with fewer international students, just announced it is suspending 49 programs.

The province wants the spots to go to programs that train students to work in areas such as health, child care, skilled trades, and STEM (science/technology/engineering/math). 

In 2024, Ontario was allocated 235,000 applications, and an expected 141,000 actual study permits.

This year, schools will be given the same number of applications as they used in 2024, and the government says if a college or university hasn’t filled 50 per cent of them by June, they’ll lose 20 per cent of them and those will be reallocated to schools that have. 

That’s to avoid spots going unfilled. 

The province is also now going to require international students pay a $2,000 deposit fee, money that is only refundable if their application is rejected by Immigration Canada.

The small number of applications allocated to private institutions could go to flight schools, English-language learning centres, health training programs, as well as the Glenn Gould School at the Royal Conservatory of Music. 

New national figures show that the federal government allocated 45 per cent fewer new study permits last year as it targeted so-called “diploma mill” colleges, a deeper cut than the 35 per cent it first announced.

As reported by the Star’s Nicholas Keung, a new report by ApplyBoard projected Canada’s yearly study permit approvals would mean a maximum of 280,000 admissions across all study levels from K-12 to colleges and universities.

Canadian colleges have seen the biggest drop, with less than 91,000 approved study permits for international students in the first 10 months of 2024, down from 210,000 during the same time period a year earlier.

Correction - Jan. 24, 2025

This article was updated from a previous version that mistakenly said Centennial College relied on lucrative partnerships with career colleges that led to an increased enrollment of international students. In fact, Centennial had no such partnerships and ran its own in-house programs for international students.