Ottawa reveals programs international students must be enrolled in to qualify for work permits
The Immigration Department has finally revealed the fields of study that international students must be enrolled in to qualify for work permits in Canada upon graduation.
The 966 eligible academic programs fall into five categories: agriculture and agri-food; health care; science, technology, engineering and mathematics; and trade and transportation. The list is meant to help direct incoming international students toward programs that meet Canada’s long-term labour market needs.
The eligible post-secondary education programs are coded according to the Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) for accurate tracking and reporting of fields of study.
On Friday, immigration officials clarified the eligibility of postgraduation work permits, saying the field-of-study requirement only applies to students who submit their study permit applications on or after Nov. 1, 2024.
These changes will impact those incoming students graduating from colleges, who must graduate from a program that qualifies under the listed fields-of-study, while university graduates are not bound by that rule as long as they graduate from a degree program at the bachelor’s, master’s degree or doctoral levels.
However, effective Nov. 1, all post-graduation work permit applicants from both colleges and universities must pass language tests — level 5 for college grads and level 7 for university grads — under the standard Canadian Language Benchmarks that are less than two years old.
According to immigration department data analyzed by ApplyBoard, an online student recruitment platform, 105,030 post-graduation work permits were approved in the first six months of this year, with 64 per cent of them going to international graduates from colleges.
Over the same period, graduates in business studies made up 42 per cent of the work permit recipients while 37 per cent were in STEM and 16 per cent in computing and IT. However, just one per cent studied trades.
“Aligning Canada’s Post-Graduation Work Permit program eligibility with labour market needs ensures the continued success and prosperity of international students, alongside positive impacts to the Canadian economy,” said ApplyBoard co-founder and CEO Meti Basiri.
However, some programs such as finance and accounting that are also critical for Canada’s labour market have been excluded from the list, said Basiri, adding that he hopes officials would update the list to make it more inclusive.
Canada’s international student program has been overhauled in the past year, with new restrictions imposed by the federal government to rein in the runaway growth of international students that has seen the number of study permit holders skyrocketed from 300,000 to a million in the last decade.
Previously, international graduates had automatic access to post-graduation work permits that lasts as long as three years regardless of the relevance of their studies to Canada’s labour market needs. That helped make Canada a top destination because the Canadian education and work credentials also offered them a potential pathway for permanent residence.
This article was first reported by The Star
