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Printed Feb 06, 2025 • Final up to date 14 hours in the past • 7 minute learn
The doorway to St. Lawrence Faculty’s Kingston campus. Meghan Balogh/The Kingston Whig-Normal Photograph by Meghan Balogh /jpg, KI, apsmc
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Schools in Ontario are in deep monetary bother, main most of the once-booming establishments to make unprecedented cutbacks to programming and staffing ranges in latest months.
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One of many greatest bulletins got here final week, when St. Lawrence Faculty in Kingston stated it might be reducing 55 packages – a 40-per-cent discount. Quickly after, Loyalist Faculty in Belleville additionally introduced it was reducing 24 packages and shedding 20 per cent of workers.
They joined a rising record of Ontario schools to announce drastic cuts in latest months. These cuts have come within the type of program suspensions, staffing reductions and closures of bodily campus house within the wake of the federal authorities’s choice in early 2024 to cap the variety of worldwide college students allowed in Canada.
This coverage change has led to a steep decline in worldwide scholar enrolment at post-secondary establishments all through the nation, and is hitting Ontario schools notably exhausting. Glenn Vollebregt, president and CEO of St. Lawrence Faculty in Kingston, stated the change has led to an enrolment drop of about 5,000 college students, most of them worldwide.
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As an alternative of round 12,000 college students, they undertaking lower than 7,000 will probably be enrolled by September. This interprets to a income drop of almost 70 per cent.
“That becomes a very difficult operating model for us,” Vollebregt stated.
“When you couple that with the fact we are the lowest funded college system in Canada, and we have the lowest tuition in Canada – when you put those two things together, we have a challenge.”
The steep decline in worldwide scholar enrolment has led to extraordinary cuts all through your entire faculty sector, and it’s had main ripple results on their operations as they’ve come to depend on the tutoring charges paid by non-domestic college students to assist maintain them afloat.
The Ontario Public Service Staff Union (OPSEU), which represents greater than 45,000 faculty college and assist workers on the province’s 24 public schools, pointed on the market’s been a collection of different cuts at its amenities throughout Ontario.
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In January, Centennial Faculty introduced it might be suspending 49 packages, or 28 per cent of general programing.
Faculty president and CEO Craig Stephenson stated the establishment was adapting to adjustments to the federal authorities’s immigration coverage that led to a drop in worldwide scholar enrolments, which considerably impacted the faculty’s monetary standing.
Additionally, Mohawk Faculty will remove 127 positions, 20 per cent of its full- and part-time assist workers. Sheridan Faculty is suspending 40 packages and shedding workers.
Fanshawe Faculty is reducing 18 packages amid a $35-million deficit this 12 months, which it anticipates will develop to a whopping $60 million deficit in 2026 because of the federal authorities’s choice.
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Seneca Faculty’s Markham website and Algonquin Faculty’s Perth website are the primary campuses to shutter solely, efficient January 2025 and August 2026, respectively.
Every of these schools attributed the cuts to adjustments to the federal authorities’s immigration coverage, however the union says it runs deeper than that. OPSEU says since 2010, provincial grants and revenues from non-public sources have remained comparatively steady in different provinces, whereas provincial funding has shrunk by 28 per cent in Ontario.
“Not only has (Premier Doug) Ford walked away from post-secondary education, he’s shifted the responsibility of financing our colleges, a public good, onto students and institutions,” JP Hornick, president of OPSEU and school at George Brown Faculty, stated in a ready assertion.
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“It’s negligent, and a failed formula sinking the system.”
What number of schools are in Ontario, and what number of have introduced cuts?
There are 24 public schools in Ontario. No less than eight establishments have publicly introduced cuts in some kind, together with reductions in programming, staffing or bodily campus closures.
Vollebregt stated the problems have been plaguing your entire system, and that it’s been constructing for years.
“It wouldn’t shock me for those who see an announcement each couple of weeks from right here ‘til March,” he said.
What is driving the cuts at Ontario colleges?
In January 2024, the federal government announced it would be capping the amount of international students allowed in Canada. At the time, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada announced it would reduce the amount of permits for international students by 35 per cent over 2023.
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It said the policy change was in response to “rapid increases in the number of international students arriving in Canada” which put pressure on “housing, health care and other services.”
The decision was cemented this year when it announced a further reduction in the intake cap, dropping it another 10 per cent from the 2024 target of 485,000. This year, it plans to issue a total of 437,000 study permits.
When did the problems begin for Ontario colleges?
While the funding challenges were exacerbated by policy changes at the federal level, the problem has been building for years.
“Colleges have been underfunded for over a decade,” Vollebregt said.
According to Colleges Ontario, the association which represents public colleges in Ontario, the provincial government provides the smallest per-capita funding of post-secondary education in the country, an issue the college sector has long lobbied the province to correct.
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It’s been that means since no less than 2012, Vollebregt stated, and it was made worse with a tuition freeze in 2019. At the moment, the province lowered tuition by 10 per cent, and it has been frozen at that price ever since.
The transfer was aimed toward rising the affordability of school and college for Ontario college students to “help people get the training they need to get good-paying jobs.”
The federal government had good intentions, however Vollebregt says it leaves schools in a troublesome spot when dealing funding in 2012 {dollars}, and bills are in 2025.
“There’s a gap there,” he stated.
How have schools handled lower-than-average funding?
To make up for the hole, schools have relied extra closely on worldwide scholar tuition. A steep drop in worldwide college students means an excellent steeper drop in income.
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With out the additional income generated by worldwide college students, Vollebregt stated schools can not afford to supply sure programming.
When deciding which packages to chop in Kingston, Brockville and Cornwall, officers thought-about three components, he stated. They requested whether or not this system was financially sustainable, what the projected enrolment could be, and whether or not it met a labour market want.
“The reality is, because we have a student population of 12,000 students and the revenue that’s associated with that, we were able to subsidize those programs that were not financially sustainable on their own,” he stated.
“If you take away that income now, with that drop, we had to reduce our program intake for programs that are not financially sustainable on their own.”
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How are schools funded?
Put up-secondary establishments in Ontario obtain funding for home college students via a mixture of provincial funding and tuition charges. That funding ratio is sophisticated, Vollebregt stated, nevertheless it’s roughly 60 per cent authorities funding to 40 per cent tuition.
They don’t obtain funding for worldwide college students, main them to pay greater tuition charges.
How a lot tuition do worldwide college students pay?
In response to Statistics Canada, the variety of worldwide college students enrolled in Canadian public post-secondary academic establishments greater than doubled in a decade, rising from 142,200 in 2010-2011 to 388,800 in 2019-2020.
StatsCan additionally says worldwide undergraduates pay virtually 5 occasions extra on common in tuition charges than Canadian college students.
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The typical tuition charges of undergraduate Canadian college students rose by 27.8 per cent in 2010-2011 to $6,580 in 2020-2021, whereas these for undergraduate worldwide college students virtually doubled to $32,039.
“Because tuition fees and enrolments of international students are growing at a much faster pace than their Canadian counterparts, their overall contribution to total tuition revenues at Canadian universities has risen. This has helped to make up for the reduction of provincial funding in universities’ budgets for their operational activities,” StatsCan stated in a 2024 report.
What does the sector want as a way to get again to regular?
OPSEU says an emergency infusion of $1.4 billion is required to stabilize the faculty system.
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Vollebregt agreed that funding into the sector is critical. He stated throughout the province, schools are lowering operations and program choices to turn into extra sustainable, however he argued it’s counterintuitive since post-secondary schooling is “an incredibly valuable investment for any government, when you consider that highly trained and motivated graduates drive industry and help grow the economy.”
However now, greater than ever, the necessity to fund schools has reached an all-time excessive. That’s what the sector wants so it may get again on its ft, Vollebregt stated.
“Rather than one specific thing, it’s really an investment into the college system,” he stated.
“We’re looking for partners to invest into us by the provincial government so that we can deliver on the provincial economic agenda and provide the talent that our economy needs, our local communities need. And we can do that, we’ve been doing it for 60 years and we’ll do it for 60 more. We need that trust and investment into our system.”
Postmedia has reached out to Ontario’s Ministry of Schools and Universities for remark.
(With information from Postmedia and The Canadian Press)
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