Ontario colleges that relied on international students keep cutting programs

Centennial College has just joined a growing list of Ontario post-secondary institutions that are significantly scaling back program offerings and staffing levels following amendments to Canada’s rules for international students — a demographic some say our colleges have been relying far too heavily on for financing.

This week, the school announced that it is discontinuing 49 of 177 programs across its five Toronto campuses as of the 2025-2026 academic year, and that additional programs “may have adjusted their intake semesters or may only be available in limited delivery formats.”

While no reason was provided in the public release, internal staff communications uncovered by the CBC state that the college is anticipating a 43 per cent decrease in international student numbers specifically, amounting to approximately 5,000 fewer enrollments in the wake of federal changes to student visas.

Because of this, along with the program cuts, layoffs are also “inevitable,” the communication states.

Over the last few months, Ottawa has backtracked on policies that saw the nation’s population explode in recent years, with Q2 of 2022 marking the fastest rate of growth since the baby boom of 1957.

The government decided to get rid of fast-track visas for students from over a dozen countries; tightened requirements for open work permits available to family members of international students, as well as post-graduation work permits; imposed a cap of 437,000 study permits for the year (a reduction of 10 per cent); and lowered overall immigration targets, among other things.

Following these steps, Ontario schools, including Mohawk College, Sheridan College, and now Centennial, have culled program offerings and/or faculty. Meanwhile, Seneca College temporarily closed a campus, citing “successive federal government decisions limiting new visas for international students,” and Algonquin College shuttered one permanently.

But, some argue that these drastic decisions are a result of colleges putting most of their eggs in one basket by hinging too much on student fees, including from international student enrollment.

Fall 2024 figures on Ontario college funding from Higher Education Strategy Associates show that student tuitions have accounted for a rapidly growing proportion of school budgets.

Between 2021-2022 and 2023-2024, the firm’s founder, Alex Usher, writes that “income from federal and provincial governments fell by about 14 per cent after inflation… but this was more than offset by gains in income from students (that is, through tuition fees, overwhelmingly from international students) and ‘other’ — that is, various forms of self-generated income.”

He goes on to point out that over the five years, the sector’s tuition income increased by a whopping 150 per cent, while full-time equivalent student numbers grew by only around 5 per cent, “meaning that per-student income has likely risen by about 57 per cent over this period.”

As colleges claim financial woes due to shrinking international student numbers, Usher writes that “it would be inconceivable anywhere else for such a sub-university sector to get 64 per cent of its revenues from tuition fees the way Ontario does. There is no national or sub-national post-secondary sector in the world where total revenues have jumped by 55-60 per cent per student in the last six years.”

Among Ontario schools examined by Higher Ed’s reports, Conestoga appears to be the worst offender for a skyrocketing reliance on student tuition, with 2023-2024 academic revenues actually being 36 per cent higher than expenses.

“The narrative you hear sometimes about international student income being needed to offset government cutbacks — it’s true in some provinces and in some sectors. But not the Ontario college sector,” Usher argues.

Mohawk, as one example, projected a $50 million deficit for 2025-2026 from the highs of last year, telling the CBC in the fall that forthcoming changes to its programming were a direct result of a “dramatic reduction in the level of international enrolments.”

Many on X seem to agree that the numbers are shocking, with some even suggesting that there be “independent inquiries, both provincial and federal, drilling into the activities” of schools like Conestoga.

Ontario Auditor General Bonnie Lysyk rang alarm bells about these trends back in 2021, saying the fact that a whopping 68 per cent of all tuition fee revenue for the province’s public colleges came from overseas at the time was putting them in a “precarious position” and was a “risky” to continue operating.