THUNDER BAY — Declining enrolment has left Confederation College with a $6.5-million budget deficit, its first in a decade.
Mostly due to the federal cap on international student permits, the college is currently projecting a 20 per cent drop in fall enrolment for the 2025-2026 school year.
It's expecting 2,903 students, a sharp decline from the 3,644 students who enroled last fall.
International student enrolment will be down by 50 per cent from the current school year, while the number of Canadian students will fall by about eight per cent.
Multiple other Ontario colleges are in similar or even worse predicaments.
In an April 16 interview, Confederation president Michelle Salo said the fall-off in foreign students is particularly impactful, because they pay significantly higher tuition fees than domestic students.
"I have been labelling it a crisis" for the college, she said.
Falling enrolment was the key contributor to the recent decision to suspend 11 programs.
The budget deficit for the fiscal year April 2025 to March 2026 is the first since 2015 when the college had a $1.3-million budget shortfall.
Operating with a deficit requires the college take money from its reserves, which currently stand at about $60 million.
"It means that we'll draw from our reserves that we have put aside, that were targeted for capital improvements," Salo said. "And then, if we don't resolve it, obviously it could be a cash flow issue in the future. So it puts potential pressure on future capital projects that were planned, because you've got to put dollars aside for that."
She said it's not possible to forecast what will happen in the coming years, and whether there might be further program cuts on as large a scale as this year.
"What we're seeing right now is some really soft enrolment from international students, and some programs that used to have strong enrolment that are still eligible for postgraduate work permits. We're hoping that will rebound, but we can't predict that right now."
The current predicament leaves Confederation counting heavily on the efforts of its recruitment team.
But the chances of increasing enrolment from northwestern Ontario appear slim.
A blue-ribbon panel reported in 2023 that colleges in the North would be more vulnerable to enrolment declines than other Ontario colleges because of slow population growth, and it called for specific measures from the government to assist them financially.
"At this point there is very little additional work we can do to try to balance our budget. We've got a few things that we're working through in the next year, but it's really a factor of inflation, and much fewer international students, the drop in tuition fees and stagnant grants, so it's really challenging," Salo said.
Peter Myllymaa, the college's vice-president of finance and administration, explained that in 2019, the government reduced tuition rates for domestic students across the province.
"I think it was by 10 per cent, and since then tuition fees have been frozen. You know our average inflation is running probably at two to three per cent a year. Every college is doing advocacy."
Colleges Ontario, which represents all 24 public colleges, continues to lobby the province for more funding.
"In the absence of sustainable funding for colleges in the future, the sector will face a $1-billion deficit," Maureen Adamson, interim president and CEO, said in a statement provided to Newswatch.
"Program cuts, campus closures and job loss will continue impacting more than 200 communities. Colleges produce graduates that are more vital to our economy and self-reliance than ever in areas of advanced manufacturing, construction, mining and supply chain, life sciences and health care."
Adamson said these programs are no longer affordable for domestic college students at current government funding levels, and that Colleges Ontario wants to work in partnership with the government "to protect Ontario."
Colleges Ontario has submitted its ideas for solutions in a pre-budget presentation.
At a public meeting Confederation arranged April 14 to discuss the suspension of the culinary management program, the audience was told the college has undertaken various measures to mitigate its financial challenge, including a freeze on hiring and a voluntary retirement incentive.
To date no layoffs have been announced, but the union representing faculty has said jobs are at risk.
The president of the OPSEU local at the college, Rebecca Ward, recently called on administration to avoid a "knee-jerk" reaction, saying international student enrolment is expected to grow by 2027.
Salo said she believes Confederation "will always be here," but that its size will depend on the levels the province is willing to fund it at.
