In the 2019/2020 academic year, just prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, student enrolments in Canadian public universities and colleges rose for the fifth consecutive academic year to almost 2.2 million. The increase was largely driven by higher enrolments of international students, a trend that has been ongoing for the last decade. See “International students accounted for all of the growth in postsecondary enrolments in 2018/2019.”