Foreign student cap to cost colleges
Schools likely to see $3B in lost revenue over three years
The federal clampdown on international students will lead to more than $3 billion in lost revenue for Ontario’s colleges over the next three years.
“We’re not going to allow colleges to fail,” Finance Minister Peter Bethlenfalvy said when asked by reporters about the revenue decreases of $1.4 billion in 2024-25 and $1.7 billion in 2025-26 forecast in the provincial budget he unveiled Tuesday.
Fewer foreign students will also mean lower provincial spending on colleges — with an expected drop in the number of instructors or lab space — which was cited as the reason behind a one-year decrease in overall post-secondary sector funding, which currently sits at $12.6 billion but will dip to $12.2 billion in 2024-25.
That decrease comes despite a recently announced three-year, $1.3-billion boost from the government.
By 2026-27, post-secondary funding is set to rise to $13 billion. A breakdown of funding for colleges and universities was not immediately available.
It is also unclear what the financial impact the international student changes will have on individual colleges and universities, given the provincial government has yet to release its plan to divvy up the limited number of visas granted by the federal government, although that is due by the end of the month.
“We continue to call for a mix of increased revenues from provincial grants and increases to domestic tuition, which is the second lowest public college tuition in Canada,” said Marketa Evans, president and CEO of Colleges Ontario.
The “future of the high-quality programs we offer to students remains at risk,” she said, adding the province’s colleges nonetheless welcomed the government’s investment in skilled trades training.
Bethlenfalvy’s budget also confirmed York University will be getting a medical school located in Vaughan, as reported first in the Star last week, with $9 million set aside for planning funding for the facility. It will be located near the Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital, at Major Mackenzie Drive and Highway 400, and will focus on training family doctors.
It will be the eighth medical school in the province, after Toronto Metropolitan University’s opens its doors in Brampton in the fall of 2025. Since taking office, the Ford government has added hundreds of new medical school and residency spots.
Bethlenfalvy noted the government has frozen college and university tuition for another three years but has previously announced a $903-million “post-secondary education sustainability fund.”
The province’s own expert panel, however, recommended the province invest more than double that.
“We are doing our part. Now we expect colleges and universities to do their part,” Bethlenfalvy said.
The province, he added, will “work with the federal government to work through the caps” on foreign students.
Steve Orsini, president and CEO of the Council of Ontario Universities, said while the provincial funding “will provide immediate financial relief, it falls far short of what the sector needs to be financially sustainable.”
He said while the new medical school is welcome and needed to “help address critical gaps in the health-care labour market,” what’s also needed is “increases in capital and base operating funding for the previously announced medical school expansions, which will help address the funding shortfall in training more physicians.”
In other education spending, funding for kindergarten to Grade 12 will increase from $36.6 billion this year to $39.4 billion in 2026-27.
Included in that is $15 million for new digital math tools, $18 million for special education and $120 mil- lion more for autism programming.
Cathy Abraham, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ As- sociation, said she’d hoped for “more investments in student nu- trition programs, however at this time, there does not appear to be dedicated funding for this. Demand for these programs continues to vastly exceed supply throughout our member boards.”
Karen Littlewood, president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, said “despite the government’s repeated claims of historic education investments, the 2024 budget only provides a 2.7 per cent projected increase to the education budget compared to last year’s spending, which is lower than inflation and does not account for rising enrolment.”
“We urge the province to recon- sider its budgetary priorities,” add- ed Karen Brown, president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario.
York University has been pushing for a medical school for years in Vaughan, and in a 2022 pitch to the Ford government said it would take in 60 students in its first year, aim- ing for a total enrolment of 360.
Addressing questions about York University’s fiscal situation — as well as labour disruptions — Beth- lenfalvy said he’s “not concerned.”
“It’s really important that we con- tinue to invest in Ontario, which includes having more opportuni- ties for Ontario students to be able to get a medical degree,” he said. “When we looked at the numbers, it’s so hard for people to get in, there’s only so many spots to get into medical school and they have to go abroad.”