Admission Woe for Canadian Colleges Continues

Over the last two years, international students, especially from India, China, Vietnam and the Philippines, have been facing difficulty in securing admissions at the community colleges in Canada. This discomfort can be attributed to rapidly growing numbers of international student from these countries against the limited capacity of the schools. Seats fill up quickly; in some cases, when community colleges decide to open the admission gate for specific courses, they fill up in moments. That was not the case some years ago.

Seeing this, one could start scratching his head and ask himself, “Where does this overnight demand come from?”

There could be multiple answers to such questions. Here is my perspective to this continuing dearth of seats for students:

Under the Student Partner Program (SPP) which was introduced by the Canadian Immigration Department almost a decade back, the numbers of Indian and Chinese students were going up every year. The scarcity of the place at the community colleges was firstly experienced in the year 2013. Some schools filled up in the blink of the eyes. However, not all the colleges were beneficiary of this boom but that was the cursor to the deteriorating situation. In the following year, international students started experiencing the same. This did not end there. The government of Canada decided to add other countries, such as Philippines and Vietnam not far long ago and replaced the SPP program with the Student Direct Stream (SDS). I believe this was the tipping point, and it looks like the situation is not going to get better in the years to come.

Ergo, we advise students to be early and fast in having their applications processed. There is a never-ending queue and if they are late in applying for the school, probably they will miss the bus.