This summer saw one of the largest mass layoffs in Ontario’s history. Some 10,000 college workers — including teachers, counsellors, librarians and support staff — lost their jobs, and the numbers continue to climb.
This decimation is happening to a system that seemed to be working. Ranked among the world’s best, Ontario’s post-secondary education system attracts international students for the high-quality education it provides. In 2020-21, 83.4 per cent of college grads were employed within six months of receiving their diploma.
A college diploma provides the best opportunity for employment, above a university degree and apprenticeship.
Enrollment in the college system has seen record highs in the last five years, and in 2023-24, Ontario’s 24 public colleges racked up a $2 billion surplus.
Perfect storm?
So, what’s changed?
The College Employer Council (CEC), which represents the colleges collectively, is calling it an “existential crisis,” while others have called it a “perfect storm.”
Between 2012 and 2021 Ontario colleges experienced a 15 per cent downturn in domestic student enrollment, and in 2020, Doug Ford’s Ontario government imposed a 10 per cent cut to tuition fees and did nothing to offset that revenue. Ontario colleges are funded at a lower per-student rate than any other province, at 56 per cent of the national average.
Lost revenues were temporarily made up for through 342 per cent growth in international student numbers, who pay on average four times more than domestic students. Colleges aggressively pursued international student enrollment. The change initially led to unprecedented surpluses.
However, in response to largely unfounded perceptions that migrants were negatively impacting housing and infrastructure, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada imposed a cap on international student enrollment in January 2024.
This storm was well forecast, with multiple reports warning about dependence on international student fees.
But the management level continued to bloat. Some college presidents earn upwards of $400,000 or $600,000 a year, even now, with international student numbers capped.
Colleges also pursued multi-million-dollar real estate acquisitions, renovations and vanity projects, blowing huge surpluses in a few short years.
Yet, starting in the 1990s, faculty and support staff have been increasingly precariously-employed. Upwards of 80 per cent of faculty are vulnerable contract workers, paid a fraction of their full-time counterparts. Many of these workers do not have a collective agreement, and have no union protection or benefits. This summer, they were walked out of institutions to which they’ve given years of their lives, with no hope of restitution.
Despite mismanagement and underfunding, based on 2024-25 financial statements, all but one college remained profitable. While international student enrollment is down — it remains at about the same level it was in 2022 — domestic enrollment continues to climb.
What’s really going on?
The crisis is being manufactured, according to the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), which represents college support staff and faculty.
In 2022-23, Ontario colleges boasted a collective surplus of $660 million on revenues of $8.7 billion, with all colleges posting a surplus. How could these financial circumstances have changed to a degree that justifies mass layoffs, program closures and the erosion of Ontario’s world class educational system?
Faculty members at Loyalist College in Belleville learned in late August of a new round of layoffs which would result in there being more full-time administrators employed by the college than faculty. College facilities were renovated for programs that were then shuttered.
For faculty member and local union leader Tracy MacKenzie, this raised serious questions.
“Why are they spending so much money to make the school beautiful,” she asks, “but not offering the very core, the purpose of what a community college is for?”
MacKenzie argues that colleges across Ontario are readying themselves for privatization. A similar scheme has been a catastrophe in Australia.
Evidence of privatization is mounting. A former Shopify exec has been lobbying in Ontario to open a new corporate-run college at the recently-closed Perth campus of Algonquin College. An entire division at Northern College has now gone into private hands, with Agnico mining corporation duplicating a public program with private funding.
While axing funding to Ontario’s colleges, Ford has been quietly directing billions of dollars to private corporations as “skills development.” Since 2021, Ford’s Skills Development Fund (SDF) has received over $1.4 billion in public funding, essentially funneling money earmarked for education to private corporations. Most of that funding is being given out in conservative ridings. The $1.4 billion figure exceeds the funding shortfall for the college sector by over 100 per cent.
What’s being lost?
Colleges open paths to post-secondary education for young people who might not otherwise have access. And they provide retraining in a time of dramatic economic realignment. Despite this, colleges are closing programs largely populated by domestic students.
International students have also been forsaken. Program cuts don’t only close routes to Canadian employment and permanent residence, they undercut community for migrant students. Absent friends, family and familiar social structures, alienated by language and inundated by new culture, students found common cause in their programs.
One student who’d left challenging political circumstances at home found herself hospitalized in Toronto as a result of a mental health crisis. It was a peer she met through George Brown College’s now-cancelled English as a second language (ESL) school who visited her in the hospital and helped her to get back on course.
Part-time faculty and staff are struggling too. One professor, a devout Muslim and single mother, teaches social sciences through a diversity, equity and inclusion lens. At the same time, she is marginalized financially by the college to whom she is contracted.
The loss of programs like George Brown College’s Assaulted Women’s and Children’s Counsellor Advocate (AWCCA) are major blows to communities.
In rural areas, program closures are contributing to an already serious shortage of care workers, special education professionals, paramedics and skilled service industry staff. This can lead to social service deserts.
For already under-employed communities, this will further limit prospects for those who cannot afford to move for their education.
The manufactured crisis in Ontario’s college system is part of a broader trend toward Ontario privatizing social services under Ford.
This demands a fight on various fronts, and there is solace to be found in joining ongoing efforts to confront these schemes.
