Community colleges across Ontario are announcing severe cutbacks. Programs are being suspended or cancelled; staff and faculty are being let go; some campuses, like the Algonquin College in Perth, are closing.

Loyalist College has announced an “intake suspension” of 24 programs and a 20 percent reduction in staff and faculty. 

St. Lawrence College in Kingston is suspending 55 programs, with further cuts to their Brockville and Cornwall campuses as well.

Why is this happening, and what can be done? I sat down with Mark Kirkpatrick, President and CEO of Loyalist College, to find out.

“There are two major causes behind the current crisis,” he notes. “One short-term and the other much longer.”

The immediate cause was a policy announcement made one year ago by Marc Miller, Federal Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. In response to a housing shortage, the government put a cap on international students. It took community colleges by surprise, and the full impact was not felt until the fall of 2024. 

Loyalist College saw a 90 percent drop in international applications to its programs. That reduced the budget by $40 million this year. It anticipates another $8 million loss next year. 

The extreme drop in enrolments, and in the funding associated with international student tuition, became a reality, he notes. Colleges had to act, and make emergency decisions.

It turns out that our community colleges had been funding their programs through international tuition fees.

How did this become a part of the system? That is the longer-term cause.

While the federal cap on international students applies to all provinces, it is only Ontario that is seeing such severe contraction in college programs. 

“We’ve gone through a few efficiency  studies in the last little while and all of them basically say colleges are efficient— they’re extremely efficient, actually. You just don’t fund them enough.”

Mark Kirkpatrick
President and CEO of Loyalist College

For more than a decade, Ontario’s funding for post-secondary education has been at a standstill. 

Underlying grants to the colleges have not changed in real dollars since 2015. Ontario’s support for community colleges is now 44 cents to every dollar spent in other Canadian provinces. 

In addition to the underfunding of the entire system, in 2019 the Ford government also reduced tuition rates by 10 percent and froze domestic tuition rates at that level.

“So we’re essentially functioning on 2015 revenue,” says Mr. Kirkpatrick, adding that increases were negligible in the decade before that, too. “Colleges have had to work really hard over the last 20 years to figure out ways to become much more efficient and to create revenue streams that offset the failure of the domestic revenue stream. And so we’ve done all kinds of things. 

“The biggest one was international students.

“We’ve gone through a few efficiency studies in the last little while and all of them basically say colleges are efficient–they’re extremely efficient actually. You just don’t fund them enough.”

Small rural communities will feel the pain the most. 

“These communities depend on their community colleges much more than urban communities that have more choice,” says Mr. Kirkpatrick. “They have transit, the ability to go somewhere else. For people in Prince Edward or Hastings County, where we have a much lower socioeconomic status, when a place like Loyalist removes programs, one of two things happens. 

“Families that can afford to pay about four times as much —because of housing — will send students somewhere else to go to school. 

“Or, they won’t go to school at all.” 

He adds that students who go away to study rarely return to their home region.

In addition to the educational loss, the employment cuts entailed in suspending programs amounts to a full one percent of the regional GDP. 

Add a quarter million dollars per year for local events, sports teams and other activities disappearing from Loyalist’s budget. 

How will these cuts affect Prince Edward County? 

“We’re actually looking at expanding the HealthPULSE bus, because there are now more opportunities in the County for our students and placements and there’s a need to get students there. 

“What we’re doing now is partnering with folks so that we don’t have to carry the full load. People see the benefit and say, ‘I’d rather we chip in something than this disappear.’”

And what about that satellite campus that the County has been hoping for? 

“We’re going to continue to figure out innovative ways to do things in the County. I have not given up on doing that campus. We’re very creative people.”

Ultimately, however, one college’s creativity will not solve the long-term systemic issue of underfunding.  

The provincial election is one way to attend to the present crisis. 

“I really hope people understand two things,” says Mr. Kirkpatrick. “First, a community college isn’t just about ‘workforce development.’ There’s a lot of things we do and a lot of things we partner with that support our community on so many other levels, and they’re all at risk. 

“And second, if I were to ask a candidate a question, it would be. ‘Do you care about Eastern rural Ontario. And if you do, what are you going to do about it?’ Because the systems that keep this region functional, whether it be hospitals or colleges, are in really dire straits. And if they’re not here, what does that mean for Eastern Ontario, especially the rural regions? 

“It’s about sustainability, too. It’s not about dropping some one-time money around election time. This is about sustainable, predictable funding.”