Chasing international students was a losing race

For a time, chasing international students was the preferred solution for Ontario colleges and universities hamstrung by provincial government underfunding and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic — and Fleming College was at the front of the race.

Then the federal government reacted to problems caused by the effects of soaring international student enrolment on housing availability and immigration targets by capping student visas.

That makes Fleming a front-runner in a very different race, one to the bottom of a very deep budget hole.

Fleming president Maureen Adamson revealed how deep during a speech to the Peterborough Rotary Club on Monday — the college will lose $40 million in anticipated revenue when annual international student enrolment is cut in half for at least the next two years.

Fleming took the two-front approach to generating international student revenue.

More than half of all students at the Peterborough, Lindsay and Haliburton campuses are international — 4,000 out of 7,200. International student tuition averages about $15,000 a year; domestic students pay about $3,400.

Fleming also moved into the public-private partnership field in a big way. It operates a Toronto campus with 4,000 students in partnership with Global University Systems, an international corporation that owns more than 20 colleges and universities in six countries.

Those students are part of a controversial, federally approved program that led to a Canadian work permit. That path to a work permit and eventual citizenship will now end, and Adamson said she expects the Toronto campus will close as a result.

Adamson framed her talk as a truth-telling exercise — an explanation of how the cap will affect Fleming, not a discussion of the unintended effects of bringing in tens of thousands of foreign students outside the normal immigration path.

Losing that revenue means the college will put expansion plans on hold and cancel some programs, she said.

That might turn out to be an understatement. Fleming balanced its budget in 2022-23 based on revenue of $160 million. Losing $40 million, or 25 per cent, of that total could be devastating.

Part of the solution must be an increase in provincial funding. Premier Doug Ford took a step in that direction with the recent announcement of nearly $1.3 billion for universities and colleges over the next three years.

However, that is half the amount the government’s own blueribbon panel on post-secondary funding recommended. And Ford did not commit to ending a five-year tuition freeze or reversing the 10 per cent tuition cut he ordered in 2019.

The low tuition policy means students and their families pay less but schools are left scrambling. Ontario colleges get $6,891 per student from the province, compared to an average $15,615 across Canada. For universities its $11,471 in Ontario, $20,772 nationally.

Many Ontario colleges, and some universities, reacted to the tuition cut and freeze, and the effect of COVID, by chasing international student revenue — and forging partnerships with private colleges.

Figures obtained from Statistics Canada by the CBC show Fleming issued nearly 8,900 international student permits last year, the 10th highest total nationally.

But as a percentage of total enrolment among the six Ontario colleges on the list, Fleming is second only to Conestoga College in Kitchener.

Shutting the Toronto campus will not save a lot of money. There are 4,000 students but a total of only about 23,000 square feet of space in three floors of two buildings.

Yes, the province needs to better fund post-secondary education. But there is also a cautionary lesson for Fleming in this story — fixating on the chase for easy money can lead to a tripwire that brings everything tumbling down.