International students paying the price for the defunding of public universities   

Thousands of students migrate every year to Canada, leaving their friends, family, and homes for a new country in their journey to pursue education in Canada. Naturally, one’s university becomes a home away from home.

Universities act as a parent, an educator, a landlord, and a restaurant. This understanding of a university as en loco parentis, that is assuming the role of parent, however, has taken a market-driven turn for the worse in recent years.

The academy is full of flaws. But that does not mean the university should be solely blamed for a broken system.

In August of 2023, Sean Fraser, Minister of Housing and Infrastructure, argued a temporary cap on international students was needed to ease the pressure on the housing market in communities with post-secondary education institutions.

Stories of growing waitlists for on-campus housing surged. It is true universities were overbooked at a certain point. Cases of classes being held in cinema halls made the news.

The government, however, has become an unreliable narrator of our reality. To critique the academy’s reliance on high enrollment numbers and on deregulated international student tuition fees, one must consider the decline in public funding of universities.

This defunding over the last 30 years has left universities underfunded, unregulated, and without a sustainable model.

Add to this list of problems affecting students is the problem of housing.

Canadians, coast to coast, are tied together by a fabric of a crisis in the form of precarious housing. Students, domestic and international, are some of the most vulnerable people facing this crisis. After all, let’s be clear, this isn’t just a housing crisis, it is an affordable housing crisis.

A 2024 Statistics Canada report indicates international students are more likely to settle for unsuitable housing situations than Canadian born students. Why is that?

Navigating a housing market requires a degree of familiarity. A competitive rental market often brings competition amongst the pool of renters. Landlords, thus, can demand a credit history, references from previous landlords, and income statements.

What if you don’t have a track record in the system that you are trying to enter? What if you’ve just moved to Canada? Don’t have a credit history, haven’t rented before, and don’t have income statements. This is often something international (and domestic) students lack.

International students also face racial discrimination when trying to secure housing.

“Housing is hard to find. Sometimes, for example, even if you’ve acquired affordable housing it might not be the most accessible. I, personally, had to sacrifice my peace and privacy while living with strangers just to have a roof on top of me at night,” one student told this reporter.

The hidden cost of being an international student is resilience. Navigating a housing market that isolates you requires incredible resilience. Working more hours and sacrificing privacy by living in crowded apartments while abandoning the little rights they have as tenants in this province  are ways international students cope with an affordability crisis for which they are scapegoats. When is the government going to address the corporations and the financialization of housing for making housing unaffordable?

The financialization of the housing market refers to the rise in prominence of financial actors such as pension firms, and investment trusts in the housing sector. The monopolization of the market has left some more vulnerable than others due to increased eviction rates over unpaid rents.

A question persists. Will an international student cap fix the housing crisis in Canada? Or will it exacerbate the trend of anti-intellectualism we are already observing?

Centennial College in the Toronto area has suspended over 45 courses since the decline in international student enrollment. Seneca College has also announced the closure of its Markham campus.

As an observer, it is at times like these we wonder if the decline in public funding of universities, tied together by an international student cap, is an attack on the academy and its future.

This commentary is part of the Cash Cow to Scapegoats series that highlights the good, the bad, and the ugly of immigration from the perspective of international students. 

Ridhima Dixit is an international student studying political science at the University of New Brunswick in Saint John. She is doing a UNB Arts 4000 placement with the Madhu Verma Migrant Justice Centre.

A version of this commentary was first published by The Baron on February 11, 2025.