UFV has stopped accepting international student enrollments for the Winter and Summer 2019 semesters. For 2018/19, UFV reached its projected target earlier than in other years, in terms of the number of international students they planned on admitting.
The deadline for the winter term was early September and for the summer term the deadline is usually Feb. 1, but applications closed in November.
“We were seeing that we had enough,” Peter Geller, vice provost and associate vice-president academic, said. “In other words we’ve reached capacity. But certainly we are still open for Fall 2019 and Winter 2020.”
UFV decided that it had reached its Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Plan target for 2018: approximately 1,700 international students, or 20 per cent of the full-time student body of UFV. Admissions were closed in order to maintain a constant percentage of international students in the upcoming year.
Geller said that there is no current intent to decrease the percentage marker of international students at UFV. At the most recent UFV Senate meeting, however, the presenter and executive director of UFV International, David McGuire, spoke about whether UFV wants to remain at the target of maintaining approximately 20 per cent of the full-time student body as international students.
“We are attempting to answer questions such as what kind of university do we want to be in the future?” Geller said. “If we have decided that right now we have reached the target of 20 percent international students, is that where we want to stay for the next five or ten years? What should our mix of students look like?”
International student enrollments have increased over the last several years, with international student numbers doubling over the last five years. According to Geller, Canada is a very desirable destination for international students, especially students from India.
“This was the projected growth, and so we talked about taking in over a thousand students this year and we have reached that goal,” Geller said.
According to Geller, the university’s next goal is to synchronize the SEM Plan to coincide with the UFV Education Plan since they were planned separately and further apart in the past. The UFV Education Plan provides further guidance for the development of the SEM Plan and it sets goals for new and continuing academic program development.
Despite stopping international student enrollments early, there are currently no changes to the admission requirements for international students. Similarly, acceptance to academic programs will be based on the same selection process as in previous years, which will be done on a first-come, first-served basis, just like for domestic students.
However, Senate has considered incorporating a more competitive admission process for international students, especially for programs that receive a lot of applications. The university may also look at including more diversity in the international student population since students from India and China make up most of the international student body.
