In a Senate report outlining Short Term Enrolment Projections, Queen’s University has reported that it has seen a 15% decline in applications from fee-paying international students for the 2022-23 academic year.
The university says that the decline is “driven primarily by a decrease in applications from applicants who are currently in China.” Provincially, international fee paying applicants are down by 9%.
The decline represents a further blow to the university’s internationalization plan, which had already seen a decline in enrolment due to the previous two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. International students made up just 7.0% of the first year undergraduate class, a decrease from 10.7 percent in 2020-2021.
Overall, international students currently comprise 14.7% of the full-time student population at Queen’s.
The university says that some of the losses incurred by international students has been balanced by an increase in domestic applications. “Queen’s has out performed the sector in this category with 13% [application] growth. This year-over-year performance builds on a positive five-year trend: during this time, applications to Queen’s have grown by 48%, while the sector has seen a 16% increase,” the report states.
The university also saw an increase in Indigenous applications for 2022-2023. According to the report, 570 individuals who self-identified as Indigenous applied, an increase of 80 applications over last year.
Applications to the Queen’s School of Graduate and Professional Studies increased by 19.8% year over year, with most of the increase coming from domestic students.
There was little change in the university’s enrolment plan, with first year enrolment university wide to be 5,084 students through 2024-2025. Graduate enrolment is expected to increase 2,453 from 2,291 students due to additional intakes projected in the one-year Computing Masters Data Science and Machine Learning Program with Egypt, and an increase in projected intakes for Smith School of Business Masters program.
