40% drop in Indians applying for education in Canada

New Delhi, January 2

The Indian demand for Canadian education declined significantly with the number of study permit applications processed going down by more than 40 per cent since July 2023, according to a newly-released data.

High cost of living to blame

The reason for the drop in latter part of 2023 was attributed to a growing number of Indian students taking on to social media to speak about the hardships they faced in Canada, specifically calling out the high cost of living and lack of opportunity promised

The Canadian Government processed almost 1,46,000 new study permit applications for Indian nationals from July to October 2002.

But across the same period in 2023, it processed fewer than 87,000, representing a year-over-year decrease of 41 per cent, data released by ApplyBoard, an online platform for international student recruitment, said.

This means that almost 60,000 fewer student visas were processed for Indian students from July to October 2023 than over the same period in 2022.

From January to June 2023, the Canadian Government processed 25 per cent more study permit applications from Indian students than it did over the same period in 2022. The sharp drop comes even as the Canadian Government announced last month that it will more than double the cost-of-living financial requirement for incoming international students beginning January 1, 2024.

So going forth, a single applicant will need to show they have 20,635 Canadian dollars ($15,181) in addition to their first year of tuition and travel costs.

While it remains to be seen how the announcement will impact international students in terms of numbers, the reason for the drop in later part of 2023 was attributed to a growing number of Indian students taking on to social media to speak about the hardships they faced in Canada, specifically calling out the high cost of living and lack of opportunity promised.

The ApplyBoard found that between April and August of 2023, the number of articles written about housing in Canada increased fivefold versus the same period last year. Additionally, the percentage of content flagged as negative rose from 12 to 30 per cent, with Indian students’ financial hardships and unemployment challenges being a consistent theme.

In September last year, students from Punjab actively took to ‘X’ to speak about skyrocketing house rents in the country, which was forcing many of them to stay in cramped basement setups, compromising their safety.

With the rising cost of living, many said they were finding it hard to meet their daily needs and were forced to seek monetary help from parents back home.

A social media user studying in the country spoke about how he was sharing a basement setup with six other students.