Canada’s international student cap helped lower rents. But will it bring colleges and universities down as well?

Amanda Shaw has worked at St. Lawrence College’s Cornwall campus for more than a decade, long enough to have lived through the international student boom. And now the bust.

When she started, foreign enrolment was low. Then it seemed to skyrocket. The small campus on the shores of the St. Lawrence River in eastern Ontario started to bustle; the college ran budget surpluses and introduced innovative programs. Even during the chaos of COVID-19 the numbers continued to grow. The same thing was happening at colleges across the province and in other parts of the country.