“Shock and Panic” arrived at Centennial College this month when the institution of the Toronto area announced that it will stop almost a third of its programs, said Vivian Eke, vice president of the Student Association on the Centennial’s Campus’ Story Arts.
Since Ottawa introduced several measures to reduce the number of international students, who would become a key part of the post -secundary system, agitation among students has been “jumping from a bad situation to another,” said EKE, who studies 3D animation .
The highest enrollment paid by international students has promoted, for years, the budgets of postsecundaria schools, universities in particular. The universities of Ontario are being beaten especially hard, with a parade of institutions that suspend large strips of offers, putting others under review and some closing satellites campus. The cuts have also begun in other provinces.
Since EKE is in the last period of his studies, he is more concerned about how these cuts will affect other students, since not everyone takes a simple and concise path at the university.
“If for some reason … something took them out of the track of the graduation, then it will be a struggle that lead them again,” he said.
Canada’s university system is designed to adapt to the local labor needs and variable registration, Therefore, it is natural that the programs evolve and sometimes end. But ontarium cuts are not preceded, says Pari Johnston, president of Canada Colleges and Institutes.
“There has always been an evolution and a flow and a flow. This is on a completely different scale,” he said.
This week, St. Lawrence College in Kingston, Ontario, cut almost 40 percent of its programs. From this spring, the intake will be suspended for 55 programs, from accounting and marketing to child and youth care, foundations of musical theater and police to learning for mechanics and masons.
Three factors guided decisions, says university president Glenn Vollebregt: the projected registration of a program, financial sustainability and the need for the labor market. Even if a program marks a box, you can fall short elsewhere, he said.
Its 12,000 student body just over a year will fall to 6,700 projected for the next fall.
Like other universities that have made cuts, Vollebregt said St. Lawrence “will teach” programs suspended to those currently registered and indicated that potential parallel offers could help with the transition. He also said that the dismissals of the staff would be “a natural extension” of the programs.
Jon Hauth, president of the Student Association of the Kingston Campus of the School, received a flood of emails of incomed students disappointed this week, even of someone who had expected to start a certain program from grade 9.
Many of the suspended offers are highly valued by the community, said Hauth, who nursing student. The fact that he meets the students and graduates of St. Lawrence “almost every time I leave the house” shows how deeply his school is integrated into the region, he says.
“All courses offered were offered for a reason and [cuts are] I will leave a great gap in our community over time. ”
The loss of programs in Ontario will continue in the coming months, says the post -Seconary researcher and consultant Alex Usher, who predicts that the general cuts could increase to 1,000 programs in the 24 public universities of the province.
The universities of Ontario receive the lowest financing per student of all provinces, while Ontario has also frozen national enrollment for years, which led schools to aggressively seek international students with greater payment, encouraged by provincial and federal governments , Usher said. These students finally represented around 70 percent of the population of international university students in Canada.
Now, these schools are dealing with significant financial success, says Usher, and those universities will feel short and long term effects.
Schools can reduce the frequency of certain classes, for example, or offer less options in optional subjects. The cuts can also be done to student services or IT systems.
“The coup to institutional budgets is so great that nothing surprises me in terms of the type of cuts they are doing,” said Usher. “At the national level, you are seeing around a $ 4 billion cut for university budgets.”
The general income of the public universities of Canada was $ 16.1 billion in 2022-23, according to Statistics Canada.
Usher is more concerned with rural institutions, since university students generally remain local and the companies in the area tend to depend largely on graduates, and in programs but desperately necessary necessary, such as those of the qualified trades. In addition, if all schools eliminate the same programs, you could create a gap in the future.
“In northern Ontario … I suspect that much less trades programs and that will make the cost of particular construction much more expensive,” he said.
“[In] BC parts where the hotel industry really matters, [people are] Suddenly, realizing: ‘Wait a minute, I am about to lose half of my supply of potential trained workers. How am I going to keep my business open? ‘
The impact on smaller, medium and more remote communities is also a concern for Johnston, with Canada universities and institutes.
“When your son can no longer enter a program because it is not offered or his local campus has to close and his student will have to go to the biggest main campus … then he begins to feel real.” She said from Ottawa.
Federal Government reforms also changed the rules for postgraduate work permits for international students, linking them to federal labor priorities, which are not always aligned with provincial or regional needs, he says, and that could damage the flow of graduates University in the local workforce. .
She has noticed that some schools cut programs of technicians of electric and automotive vehicles, for example, “that one might think would be absolutely in front and the center.”
With programs reductions, the hiring of freezing and the budget budgets that also emerge in other parts of the whole country, Johnston says that universities face “a Canadian pan problem” that could weaken the public training capacity of everything The country.
“We are training the builders, the producers, the creators, the makers, the first to respond and the caregivers in which the Canadians trust,” he said.
“I think we are putting that at risk.”
