Centennial College in Toronto has said it will suspend 49 programs and reduce staff, part of a steady flow of announcements from colleges about deficits, program suspensions and job losses.Eduard Heuber/Arch Photo Inc.
David Agnew, the long-time president of Seneca Polytechnic, paused as he searched for the words to describe the financial state of Ontario’s college sector. He settled, ruefully, on a combination of train wreck, dumpster fire and hot mess.
The past few months have seen a steady flow of announcements from colleges about deficits, program suspensions and job losses.
Fanshawe College in London said it expects to run a combined deficit of nearly $100-million over the next two years. Loyalist College in Belleville said it’s suspending 30 per cent of its programs and may cut 20 per cent of its staff. St. Lawrence College in Kingston is suspending more than 50 programs. Centennial College in Toronto said it will suspend 49 programs and reduce staff. And that was just the past two weeks.
As Ontario heads to the polls on Feb. 27, its college sector is in the midst of a financial crisis. The schools say they need steady, predictable funding from government to make up for the $2-billion in international tuition revenue they expect to lose over the next two years.
“My concern is that we’re sleepwalking through this,” Mr. Agnew said.
More college layoffs result from federal cut to number of international students
Although Ontario has been hardest hit, colleges across the country are also facing hard times.
The short-term trigger for the crisis was the federal government’s decision to cut the number of international study permits by 35 per cent last year and a further 10 per cent this year, a response to an overheated housing market. Ottawa also introduced more stringent rules around postgraduate work permits. Demand for visas has since plummeted and many schools can’t fill their international allocation.
“It’s been hard to convince people overseas that Canada is still open,” Mr. Agnew said. “I think the Canada brand abroad is broken.”
The longer-term issue is that international student fees have become a pillar of the college funding system, and that loss is having a profound impact.
Under the current model, the schools say, they lose money for each domestic student enrolled. They have used international student fees to subsidize costly programs.
Mr. Agnew acknowledged that some colleges expanded a great deal during the international student boom. Some had more international students than domestic in recent years, for example, and some funded campus expansion with the surpluses. Now the pendulum is swinging the other way.
What’s needed, Mr. Agnew said, is a public discussion of how to strike an appropriate funding balance.
Colleges have already felt a revenue hit in the hundreds of millions of dollars. According to a report by Ontario’s budget watchdog, colleges reduced their spending by more than $750-million this fiscal year.
“We are the worst-funded higher education system amongst all 10 provinces,” Mr. Agnew said. “In rough figures, the Saskatchewan government provides three times as much funding per student as Ontario.”
Provincial grants to colleges were stagnant through most of the 2010s under both Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments. After winning office, Doug Ford cut domestic tuition fees by 10 per cent in 2019 and has frozen them at that level for the past six years, a period marked by significant inflation. Last year, the Ford government provided an additional $1.3-billion in funding for the postsecondary system but rejected the call from an expert panel to allow domestic tuition fees to rise.
Jasmine Bates, president of the College Student Alliance, said the impact of recent program cuts is already being felt on college campuses. Fewer programs are being offered and students are anxious about their prospects, she said.
“Students are already bearing the brunt of cuts and program closures,” Ms. Bates said. “It’s crucial for whoever ends up forming the next provincial government to significantly increase operating grants and align per-student funding with the national average.”
In a statement, the Progressive Conservatives defended their record in government, saying the $1.3-billion investment in the sector last year was the largest spending increase in a decade. They also said the tuition freeze has kept costs down for students and their families.
Liberal spokeswoman Bahoz Dara Aziz said Mr. Ford has starved universities and colleges. She said Liberal Leader Bonnie Crombie intends to give schools the support they need, but didn’t specify what form that would take.
Colleges Ontario, the organization that represents all 24 publicly funded colleges, said in a prebudget submission that operating grants have declined 17 per cent in real terms over the past 17 years. Its projections show revenues in the system declining from more than $8-billion this year to between $5.2-billion and $6.0-billion by 2026-27.
Colleges, which offer mainly two-year programs, have traditionally focused on career training that serves the labour-market needs of their local communities. That outlook shifted as governments encouraged schools to fund operations with international tuition.
While international enrolment in colleges soared after 2015, domestic enrolment did not. According to Statistics Canada data, the number of Canadian students in Ontario colleges declined by more than 40,000 between 2015-16 and 2022-23, from about 247,000 to 204,000.
Elizabeth Buckner, a professor of higher education at the University of Toronto, said that’s partly the result of a demographic dip in the 15-24 age group, and partly because more students are choosing university over college. She said it’s clear the major issue facing the sector is underfunding.
”We need to view investments in education and in the college sector as an investment in the future of the province,” Prof. Buckner said. “However unpopular it is, the government could consider allowing colleges to raise tuition.”
Glenn Vollebregt, president of St. Lawrence College, said in an interview that a year ago, his school had 12,000 students enrolled. Next fall, if he’s lucky, it will be about 7,000. Three-quarters of college costs are in payroll, so inevitably people will lose their jobs, he said.
“It’s really painful,” Mr. Vollebregt said, his voice breaking with emotion.
He was once a young college student from a small town, he said, and the general business diploma he earned opened doors for him. Reducing program offerings will mean fewer opportunities for students in Eastern Ontario and fewer graduates for the local work force, he added.
“I’m an optimist by nature. I’m hopeful government will recognize what an investment in colleges means,” he said. “What we need is consistent, sustainable funding.”