Quebec’s International Student Crisis: UQAM Faces 39% Drop as Government Policies Spark Global Concern

For the university’s rector, Stéphane Pallage, there is no doubt about the origin of the problem: the recent policies of the Legault government, which for the first time last February, imposed a cap on the number of foreign students that each institution can welcome through the Certificat d’acceptation du Québec (CAQ) system. This situation has a cost, he estimates: "Our reputation has taken a hit," he told La Presse.

The rector criticizes a system that he considers "very annoying" and opaque, as it is impossible to follow in real time the number of CAQ applications, which also mixes new arrivals and students already on site for renewal. He fears that a student nearing the end of a doctoral program could be administratively blocked just a few months before graduation. This uncertainty is being felt abroad, a finding that Stéphane Pallage was able to make during a trip to Morocco where his university counterparts were insistently asking him: "but what’s going on in Quebec?".

Faced with this situation, UQAM’s position is firm: the rector is calling for the "abolition of quotas" as well as the relaunch of the Programme de l’expérience québécoise for foreign graduates. He is calling on the government to "consider universities for what they are: very interesting places of integration for Quebec". Although the financial impact of this decline has not yet been quantified, the university is already forced to suspend projects, such as the renovation of its library. The rector is therefore making an appeal, considering that "it is not too late to massively reinvest" in higher education.