When the number of international students plummeted after the cap was introduced 18 months ago, colleges – foreseeing deficits ahead – began to cut jobs and programs.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Ontario colleges have been shedding thousands of jobs over the past year in what is being described as one of the largest mass layoffs in the province’s history by the union that represents most college faculty.
More than 8,000 jobs have been or will be lost in the college sector since the federal government imposed a cap on the number of international study permits in January, 2024. That figure was released in a recent report from arbitrator William Kaplan.
Colleges have been announcing layoffs and program closings on an individual basis for months, but the arbitrator’s report brings those numbers together for the first time. The report was produced as part of a contract negotiation between the colleges and the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents about 15,000 college faculty and staff.
OPSEU president JP Hornick.Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press
OPSEU president JP Hornick said the scale of the job losses represents one of Ontario’s biggest mass layoffs, and had it not been for Mr. Kaplan releasing the numbers, they would have remained buried.
“We will have lost nearly 10,000 jobs with no public scrutiny within the college system,” said Hornick, who prefers no honorific. “We’re looking for some accountability.”
Mr. Kaplan’s report tallied more than 8,000 job reductions, based on reporting from 19 of the province’s 24 colleges. Of the jobs lost, 613 were full-time academic positions and 3,370 were part-time, partial-load or sessional teaching roles. Approximately 2,400 support staff jobs were lost, and more than 900 administrative positions. The union said in a statement it’s anticipating more job losses.
“What we’re seeing across the board is a classic playbook of starving the system of resources, forcing people out and worsening conditions,” Hornick said. Hornick added that the loss of more than 650 programs at colleges across the province, which have either suspended admissions or been shut down, will have a significant impact on local economies.
Ontario colleges face biggest financial hit from Ottawa’s international student clampdown
In his report, Mr. Kaplan described the situation as “grave” and the list of programs suspended or closed as “alarming.”
In January, 2024, the federal government placed a cap on the number of international study permits it would process, reducing visa issuance by 35 per cent in the first year, and announced a further 10-per-cent cut this year, with the aim of easing pressure on housing and health care.
That decision has had a massive impact on the finances of the Ontario college system, which had come to rely on much higher international tuition fees to fund a large portion of operations. The 24 public colleges ran a collective surplus of approximately $660-million in 2022-23, for example, owing largely to growing international tuition revenue.
But in 2021, the province’s then auditor-general warned that overreliance on international tuition posed a serious financial risk to the entire system.
In her report, Bonnie Lysyk said “the ministry has not developed a strategic plan for the sector to help mitigate the risk of a sudden decline in international students and the impact it could have on the college sector.”
Proposal aims at attracting research talent to Canada as U.S. science funding faces cuts
When the number of international students plummeted after the cap was introduced 18 months ago, colleges – foreseeing deficits ahead – began to cut jobs and programs.
In his summary of the colleges’ position in his report, Mr. Kaplan wrote that they did not believe they had enough money to fund their operations and maintain existing programs without the foreign student fees. The College Employer Council said there was no reason to believe help was on its way in the form of increased provincial funding.
“In fact, the Ontario government had made its expectations clear: the colleges needed to solve their fiscal challenges through efficiencies and cost reductions,” Mr. Kaplan wrote.
Hornick said college administrators and the provincial government led by Doug Ford are both to blame for the loss of jobs and programs.
“The Ford government’s been in there for seven years and has been chronically underfunding the system,” Hornick said, referring to a tuition fee freeze for domestic students that has been in place since 2019, hampering the colleges’ ability to raise funds, and a rate of per-student funding that is the lowest in the country.
Bianca Giacoboni, a spokesperson for Minister of Colleges, Universities, Research Excellence and Security Nolan Quinn, said the claims made by OPSEU are baseless and false.
“In the last 14 months alone, we have provided unprecedented amounts of new funding to our publicly assisted postsecondary sector, with over $2-billion in new funding into our colleges and universities, on top of the $5-billion we put into the sector every year,” Ms. Giacoboni said. “Due to the federal government’s unilateral changes to the international student system, difficult decisions are being made across the country in the postsecondary sector.”
Maureen Adamson, interim president of Colleges Ontario, said colleges are working with the provincial government “to solve the financial headwinds of the sector and produce the graduates our economy needs.”