'A good start': Sault College, Algoma respond to province's $1.3B funding boost

Sault College president David Orazietti has offered his reaction to the Ontario government’s most recent funding announcement for the province’s post-secondary education sector.

Jill Dunlop, Minister of Colleges and Universities, announced on Monday that the province will provide $1.3 billion to the sector to sustain it partly due to the federal government’s January announcement of a two-year cap on international student admissions beginning in September 2024.

The cap was announced as a measure to combat unethical private colleges that exploit international students, and to provide breathing space while Canada addresses its housing shortage for international students and other newcomers.

Ontario colleges and universities have increasingly relied on international students as a major form of revenue.

“Any funding from the province is welcome,” Orazietti told SooToday in an interview.

“I'm very pleased to see some additional funding for the sector. It’s a good start but it does not fully recognize the Blue-Ribbon Panel recommendations.”

An Ontario Blue-Ribbon Panel delivered a government-commissioned report in November 2023 urging the Ford government to end its post-secondary tuition freeze for domestic students and increase per-student funding to its universities and colleges.

The Progressive Conservative government introduced a 10 per cent tuition cut for domestic students in 2019 and did away with the former Liberal government's free tuition program for low- and middle-income students.

That freeze forced post-secondary institutions to increase their dependence on much higher international student tuition fees.

The Blue-Ribbon Panel report stated that ending the tuition freeze and boosting per-student funding would help colleges and universities, but the province announced on Monday it will keep domestic student tuition fees frozen for at least three more years.

“It’s politically convenient to do that but it doesn’t help support the operations in the sector,” Orazietti said.

“It makes it to some extent more difficult to offer programs that young people want to enroll in. It makes our sustainability more challenging by making it more difficult to be able to offer a broader range of programs that everyone wants to see running in our institutions.”

The Blue-Ribbon Panel said  low levels of provincial funding to colleges and universities combined with the 2019 tuition cut and freeze threaten the financial sustainability of the sector.

The Panel called on the province to raise its grants to institutions by 10 per cent and then increase that by two per cent for the following three years and that tuition should rise by five per cent and increase by two per cent for three years after.

The Panel recommended an eight per cent tuition hike for professional and in-demand programs.

“We’re back to 2015 tuition levels,” Orazietti said of the government’s decision to keep the tuition freeze in place until at least 2026-27.

The province is allowing colleges and universities to raise tuition by five per cent for out-of-province students.

However, Orazietti said “Sault College has very few students from out of province. It may have the sector thinking more about recruiting across Canada.”

The province will distribute over $700 million among Ontario's 24 public colleges and 23 universities, an additional $200 million going to those institutions in greatest need and an extra $10 million top-up for northern and rural schools.

The province will also spend nearly $170 million to help schools with capital repairs and equipment costs, $100 million for STEM programs, $65 million for "research and innovation" and $23 million for additional mental health support.

It is yet to be determined how much of the $1.3 billion funding package each Ontario college and university will receive.

Orazietti told SooToday after February’s Sault College board of governors meeting that Sault MP Terry Sheehan and Sault MPP Ross Romano are “engaged” in discussions with the college.

Orazietti said he and Romano had “a general discussion” about Monday’s provincial funding announcement.

Orazietti said he is looking forward to hearing more details about how many new applications from international students will be allocated to Sault College and that the institution will continue its domestic student enrollment efforts.

Meanwhile, Algoma University says it "still does not have sufficient information or clarity to assess potential impacts, if any, on our institution,” wrote Mo Kahlout, the university's manager of communications, in an email to SooToday.

Kahlout offered a response to the federal government’s cap on international students.

“The federal government's incoming cap on international study permits is expected to primarily affect private for-profit institutions and bad apples, not public universities like Algoma University that offer a high-quality education and wrap-around supports like free mental health care, while preparing students to fill urgent needs in Ontario's labour force.”

Algoma University has over 7,000 students enrolled at its three campuses: the Sault, Brampton and Timmins. Its Sault Ste. Marie campus has approximately 2,400 students enrolled, including over 800 international students.

However, data provided to Village Media's The Trillium from the federal immigration ministry shows that in 2023, Algoma University was approved for 9,329 international study permits — the most of any university in Canada.

Locally, Sault College has approximately 2,300 students enrolled, including 1,000 international students. A further 2,800 Sault College students attend classes at TriOS College in the Greater Toronto Area as part of a private-public partnership between the two schools.

Under the federal government's new rules, international students who attend private partner schools will no longer be eligible for post-graduate work permits.

“The real impact is on international students attending our partner campus. We stand to lose a significant stream of revenue,” Orazietti said in a prior interview with SooToday.

"Students that come to the campus at Sault College will continue to be eligible for a post-graduate work permit but students that study at our partner campus are no longer eligible for a post-graduate work permit, and because of that, students would be likely to choose to enroll elsewhere,” Orazietti said.

“They would no longer choose our partner and the financial implication to the college is substantial because our partner campus generates about one-third of all the revenue for our college.”

“The revenue that is provided through our public-private partnership (with TriOS College) is equivalent to approximately one-third of our budget of $125 million,” Orazietti said.

Algoma University referred SooToday to the The Council of Ontario Universities (COU) statement on the federal government’s international student cap.

“Today’s announcement, while providing short-term relief, falls far short of what the government’s own expert panel found was urgently required. Ontario’s universities now face an eight-year long tuition freeze without adequate multi-year base funding, which continues to undermine the financial sustainability of the sector,” the COU stated in a Feb. 26 release.

The COU said full implementation of the Blue-Ribbon Panel’s recommendations should be put in place, including $2.5 billion in ongoing base funding for the province's colleges and universities over the next three years with $1.9 billion in base funding specifically for universities.

The COU said that the tuition freeze does not address the growing demand of Ontario high school students applying to Ontario universities, stating those applications have increased by more than 11 per cent since 2020.

"As a result, more and more Ontario high school students will face greater barriers in enrolling in the program of their choice,” the COU wrote.

Stating that “our universities are at a breaking point,” the COU is calling on the province to provide more multi-year base funding to universities, as recommended by the Blue-Ribbon Panel, in its 2024 budget.