In the 2023/2024 academic year, enrolments in public colleges and universities increased to 2.3 million students, up 5.8% from 2.2 million the previous year. After a slight decline in 2020/2021 (-0.6%) due to COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions, followed by modest growth in 2021/2022 (+1.1%) and 2022/2023 (+0.7%), the growth in 2023/2024 was the first notable increase.
Much of the growth in 2023/2024 was due to international students, whose enrolments rose by 103,953 (+22.2%), with increases being observed in both colleges (+82,608; +40.1%) and universities (+21,345; +8.1%). The 2023/2024 data in this release were collected prior to the implementation of recent federal policy changes aimed at stabilizing growth and reducing the number of new international student permits. These data therefore provide an important benchmark for assessing the impact of these policies on international student enrolments in subsequent years.
