St. Clair College to suspend 18 programs due to international student cap

St. Clair College has decided to suspend more than 18 programs due to a lack of student interest, tuition freezes, and the cap on international students.

St. Clair College will be suspending some programs this fall due to recent changes to the international student cap.

Starting in September, 18 programs will be suspended, primarily based on student demand now that the college has received its allocation from the province in terms of the number of international offers that can be made.

Over the last year, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has made a number of changes to the number of study permit applications to be accepted, which has reduced the number of international students coming to Canada by about 40 per cent.

For 2025, the IRCC will issue 437,000 study permits, a 10 per cent decrease from the 2024 cap. Ontario can issue approximately 117,000 permits.

The impacted programs are:

- Journalism

- Fashion Design Technician

- Border Services (Chatham campus)

- Autism and Behavioural Science (Postgraduate)

- Electric Drive Vehicle Technician (one year)

-Electric Drive Vehicle Fundamentals

- Mechanical Technician (CAD [Computer-aided Design]/CAM [Computer-aided Manufacturing])

- Hospitality

- Public Relations

- Electrical Engineering technician (Chatham campus)

- Office Administration Health (Chatham campus)

- Paramedic (Chatham campus)

- Strategic Project Management (Graduate) transitioning to part-time

- Construction Project Management (Graduate) transitioning to part-time

- Chemical Laboratory Technician

- Power Engineering Techniques (one year)

-Power Engineering Technician

- Dental Assisting

St. Clair College President Michael Silvaggi said those currently in the impacted programs will continue on.

“September is our typical academic year, that’s most common,” he said.

“So those programs will not have intakes in September. That means students that are in year two, and year three, obviously continue in those programs because they’re not impacted.”

He said if there is demand, they can bring the programs back for a winter or spring intake.

“It’s an opportunity to potentially reimagine the program, but at the end of the day if students are showing interest, and applicants are calling us and contacting us, we have opportunities to run those in January and May of next year. So that’s where their application cycle falls right now,” said Silvaggi.

According to Silvaggi, when the federal government also changed the labour alignments on programs, St. Clair was impacted.

“There was a number of programs that no longer had that labour alignment piece attached to them, which had made them unattractive to an international student because there’s no longer an opportunity for post-graduate work permit upon graduation,” he added.

“So, some of these programs that are suspended used to benefit from having international students - that would no longer be the case.”

Silvaggi said that the programs being suspended typically only saw 20 to 25 students.

As the college finalizes its budget, it will also be offering early incentive leaves for staff and faculty to create some capacity moving forward, however Silvaggi said there is not a set number of incentive leaves at this time.

— Meagan Delaurier/Kathie McMann/AM800 News