College course cuts ‘breaks all hope’ for international students

Centennial College announced it is cutting 49 programs in response to the new cap on international student admissions. Adrian Ghobrial has the details.

The number of courses being offered at Canada’s post-secondary schools is on the decline.

This week, yet another college, Ontario’s Centennial, announced it will suspend enrollment for 49 courses. The school’s president, Craig Stephenson, blamed the federal government’s cap on international student permits, saying in a statement that “like other colleges and universities, we are adapting to federal immigration policy changes that have had significant implications for our enrolments and finances.”

International student Mart Ates, who moved from Turkiye last year to attend Centennial College, told CTV News that “everyone has hopes when moving to Canada. This decision breaks all hope.”

The course cuts by Centennial follow similar steps taken by Ontario’s Sheridan and Fleming Colleges, with Mohawk and Conestoga announcing plans to reduce their number of staff by the hundreds. This comes after the federal government’s announcement to reduce the number of new student visas by more than a third in 2024, with further cuts in 2025, and again in 2026.

Post-secondary institutions say that the loss of international student tuition fees has left many schools in a deficit, forcing them to make difficult decisions about their course offerings. Though the British Columbia Federation of Students says universities and colleges are also to blame.

“Institutions have become very reliant on these tuition fees. They make up a large portion of their revenue,” chairperson Jessie Niikoi said.

“More public funding is necessary to solve the issue of an over reliance of international tuition fees in general. What needs to happen is the funding needs to be provided for every institution. Every public institution needs to be properly funded.”

No financial support from government: professor

University of Toronto higher education professor Glen Jones notes that colleges and universities haven’t received much of an increase in financial support from government as inflation has soared. This leaves “all of the colleges and universities to go after revenue, and the only major source of revenue they had available to them was international students and international student tuitions.”

The number of international students has skyrocketed across the country in recent years. The number with active study permits in Canada rose to 1,040,985 in 2023, a 29 per cent increase over 2022, according to Immigration, Citizenship and Refugees Canada.

Jones believes that the federal government “clearly incentivized institutions to try to increase international enrollment. We’ve had two strategic plans federally both in 2014 and 2019 that encouraged enrollment growth, and then there was a sudden decision to roll it back.”

This led to the sudden reduction of course offerings for students and layoffs for teachers and professors. In Ontario, the 2024 budget revealed that Ontario colleges will lose approximately 3.1 billion dollars over the next two years because of the expected drop in international student enrollment – it’s a similar story across other provinces.

How might we fix this issue?

Jones believes that this is the time for a reset, telling CTV News “we need to move towards a new equilibrium, with a smaller number of international students, but we do need to continue to have international students and maintain those relationships.”

He adds that “it must also involve provincial government funding. We can’t keep having cuts in the absence of some grants that recognize inflation. If we want to provide good post-secondary education across the country, provincial governments have to step up.”