As colleges slash programs, concern grows about less choice for students, and impact to workforce

“Shock and panic” hit Centennial College this month when the Toronto-area institution announced it will halt nearly a third of its programs, said Vivian Eke, the student association vice-president at Centennial’s Story Arts campus.

Since Ottawa introduced various measures to reduce the number of international students — who’d become a key part of the post-secondary system — the upheaval among students has been like “jumping from one bad situation to another,” said Eke, who is studying 3D animation. 

The higher tuition paid by international students have, for years, boosted the budgets of post-secondary schools, colleges in particular. Ontario’s colleges are being hit especially hard, with a parade of institutions suspending wide swaths of offerings, putting others under review and some closing satellite campuses. Cuts have also started in other provinces.

Since Eke’s in the final term of her studies, she’s more worried about how those cuts will affect other students, since not everyone takes a straightforward, concise path in college. 

“If for whatever reason… something steered them off the track of graduation, then it’s going to be a struggle getting them back on track,” she said. 

Canada’s college system is built to adapt to local labour market needs and varying enrollment, so it’s natural for programs to evolve and sometimes end. But Ontario’s cuts are unprecedented, says Pari Johnston, president of Colleges and Institutes Canada.

“There has always been an evolution and an ebb and flow. This is at a completely different scale,” she said. 

This week, St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ont., slashed nearly 40 per cent of its programs. As of this spring, intake will be suspended for 55 programs — from accounting and marketing to child and youth care, musical theatre and police foundations to apprenticeships for mechanics and masons. 

Three factors guided the decisions, says college president Glenn Vollebregt: a program’s projected enrolment, financial sustainability and labour market need. Even if a program ticks one box, it may fall short elsewhere, he said.

His student body of 12,000 a little over a year ago will drop to a projected 6,700 by next autumn.  

Like other colleges that have made cuts, Vollebregt said St. Lawrence will “teach out” suspended programs to those currently enrolled and he indicated potential parallel offerings could help with the transition. He also said staff layoffs would be “a natural extension” of programs winding down.

Jon Hauth, student association president of the school’s Kingston campus, got a barrage of emails from disappointed incoming students this week, including from one who’d been looking forward to starting a certain program since Grade 9.

Many of the suspended offerings are highly valued by the community, said Hauth, who a nursing student. That he runs into St. Lawrence students and grads “almost every time I leave the house” shows how deeply his school is integrated into the region, he says.

“All of the courses that were offered were offered for a reason and [cuts are] going to leave a huge gap in our community over time.” 

The loss of programs in Ontario will continue over the next few months, says post-secondary researcher and consultant Alex Usher, who predicts the overall cuts could rise to 1,000 programs across the province’s 24 public colleges.

Ontario colleges receive the lowest per-student funding out of all the provinces, while Ontario has also frozen domestic tuition for years, which led schools to aggressively seek higher-paying international students — encouraged by both provincial and federal governments, Usher noted. Those students ultimately made up about 70 per cent of Canada’s international college student population. 

Now, those schools are grappling with a significant financial hit, Usher says, and those colleges will feel short- and long-term effects.

Schools might reduce the frequency of certain classes, for instance, or offer fewer choices in electives. Cuts could also be made to student services or IT systems. 

“The hit to institutional budgets is so big that nothing surprises me in terms of the kind of cuts that they’re making,” Usher said. “Nationally you’re looking at about a $4 billion cut to college budgets.” 

The overall revenue of Canada’s public colleges was $16.1 billion in 2022-23, according to Statistics Canada.

Usher is most worried about rural institutions — since college students generally stay local and area businesses tend to rely heavily on graduates — and on desperately needed yet pricey programs, such as those in the skilled trades. Also, if schools all eliminate the same programs, it could create a gap down the road. 

“In northern Ontario… I suspect a lot fewer trades programs and that’s going to make the cost of construction in particular a lot more expensive,” he said. 

“[In] parts of B.C. where the hospitality industry really matters, [people are] suddenly realizing: ‘Wait a minute, I’m about to lose half my supply of potential trained workers. How am I going to keep my business open?'” 

The impact on smaller, mid-sized and more remote communities is also a concern for Johnston, with Colleges and Institutes Canada.

“When your kid can’t get into a program anymore because it’s not offered or your local campus has to close and your student is going to have to go 50 kilometres to the bigger main campus… then it starts to feel real,” she said from Ottawa. 

The federal government’s reforms also changed the rules for postgraduate work permits for international students — tying them to federal labour priorities, which don’t always align with provincial or regional needs, she says, and that could damage the flow of college grads into local workforces.

She’s noticed some schools cutting automotive and electric vehicle technician programs, for example, “which you would think would be absolutely front and centre.”

With program reductions, hiring freezes and plummeting budgets also emerging elsewhere across the country, Johnston says colleges face “a pan-Canadian problem” that could weaken the entire country’s public training capacity.

“We’re training the builders, the growers, the makers, the doers, the first responders and the caregivers that Canadians rely on,” she said.

“I think we’re putting that at risk.”