Simon Fraser University campus on Burnaby Mountain, B.C., last year.Isabella Falsetti/The Globe and Mail
After more than 30 years in operation, Simon Fraser University is ending its Master of Publishing program. The program was Canada’s only university-level master’s degree dedicated to the publishing industry.
In a statement on July 6, the university announced it would suspend new admissions after the program’s incoming 2026 cohort. The undergraduate Minor in Publishing will continue being offered, but will be delivered through SFU’s school of communication.
“Publishing at SFU is not ending, but it is taking new forms,” the statement reads.
Launched in 1994 with the goal of training students to work in the Canadian trade publishing industry, the master’s program evolved to include course material focusing on e-books, audiobooks, and most recently, artificial intelligence.
In the announcement, the university cited “rapid shifts” in the publishing industry, saying students are increasingly drawn to “interdisciplinary degrees and certificate offerings that allow them to develop wide-ranging” skill sets.
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It said moving the publishing minor to the communications school is “an obvious fit,” considering the majority of publishing minors are communication majors. The minor curriculum will be updated before welcoming new students.
“It’s sad and hard news for all of us,” SFU publishing director Hannah McGregor said in an interview. She said the decision is a result of academic and industry complexities.
These challenges include cuts to provincial funding for postsecondary institutions and the federal government’s changes to student visa policies, which have resulted in a drastic decrease in international students. “There just isn’t any resilience in the system right now,” she said.
SFU follows in the footsteps of several postsecondary institutions across Canada that have shuttered or suspended their arts programs, including Thompson Rivers University, Centennial College and Sheridan College.
The publishing industry itself is grappling with increasing production costs and the rise of AI, which makes some companies hesitant to take on interns or placement students, McGregor said.
In response to the news, some lamented the loss of the program and its impact on the publishing sector at large. “It’s really disappointing to lose the only program in Canada to treat publishing as an endeavour worthy of graduate-level analysis rather than just a training ground,” Alana Wilcox, editorial director of Coach House Books, said in an e-mail.
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Raincoast Books vice-president of marketing Jamie Broadhurst, a former instructor within SFU’s undergraduate publishing minor, said the school’s master’s program was “ahead of its time” in championing Canadian writing on the global stage.
“It’s just a bittersweet irony that after everything that they have been working for and preaching to the community and to the publishing industry and to readers in Canada … unfortunately, for circumstances beyond their control, it’s being wound down,” he said. “We need Canadians who are trained to work in publishing, and we need them more than ever.”
The loss of the specialized master’s program, he worries, will decentralize Canada’s publishing landscape even more. He said this could force aspiring publishing students to move elsewhere in Canada – or to abandon the sector altogether. He added that two-thirds of Raincoast Book’s sales and marketing teams studied publishing at SFU.
“It makes it that much harder for a gifted student in Nanaimo, a gifted student in Lethbridge, a student here in Vancouver,” he says, adding that “isn’t in the long-term benefit of the health of the publishing ecosystem in Canada.”