Projecting $50M deficit, Mohawk College president warns of layoffs, blames government policies

The president of Mohawk College says a drop in international student enrolment means the school is facing a projected $50-million deficit in the 2025-2026 school year.

That’s going to mean layoffs, he told workers in an Oct. 30 memo.

Mohawk’s president Paul Armstrong told CBC Hamilton he already planned a “deep review” of college programming when he started his role in July, but that government policy changes forced an even deeper look.

“What we were seeing is a dramatic reduction in the level of international enrolments that we can anticipate,” he said, adding that will result in a gap between revenue and expenses. 

Heather Giardine-Tuck, president of Local 240 of the Ontario Public Sector Employee Union (OPSEU), said “people are very worried about their programs, about their students.” She represents about 1,000 faculty, librarians and counsellors at Mohawk.

Susan Lau represents about 1,000 support staff in OPSEU Local 241 — a group including people who work in information technology, facilities services and campus stores. She said the situation has caused “a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress and a lot of worry.”

A “feeling of understaffing and high workloads,” has been an issue for the past five years, she said, and members worry about that getting worse.

College sees drop in international enrolments, applications

In an email, Mohawk spokesperson Bill Steinburg told CBC Hamilton that in fall 2023 the college had 7,309 international enrolments. This past fall, it had 6,166. Enrolment represents the number of sections students are taking, not the number of students. 

As of last week, the college had received 3,065 international applications. At the same time last year, it had received 5,691.

“Our financial challenge will result in impacts in every single area of the college,” Armstrong said. “There will be program reductions. There will be service reductions. There will be staffing position eliminated within all of our three employee groups: administrative, support staff and faculty.”

Mohawk says it has 1,200 full-time employees and up to 1,250 part-time employees, though that number changes each semester. There are 14,694 students enrolled in programs this semester. 

President doesn’t say how many people face layoffs

“We will do everything we can to eliminate salary costs appropriately before we get to the point that we’d be issuing layoff notices to anyone,” Armstrong said. 

He said it’s too early to know how many layoffs there will be, partly because the college has offered up early retirement packages with a Nov. 15 deadline and doesn’t know how many people will take them.

Neither union blames the administration for the financial strife. “The situation that we’re in is the result of chronic underfunding from the provincial government,” Giardine-Tuck said.

“Choosing not to fund education in a wholesome and comprehensive way has led to institutions being forced to find revenue elsewhere. And that ended up being international students,” Lau said. “Now that levels of government are turning off the tap on that, the entire system is in a state of having to take drastic actions to make up the loss.” 

Feds claim it’s protecting program’s ‘integrity’ 

Over the past year, the provincial and federal governments have made numerous policy changes effectively limiting the number of international students in Ontario colleges and universities. This came in response to critics linking immigration to the housing crisis, as well as concerns regarding a lack of support for international students, and businesses described as “unscrupulous private operators.” 

In a statement to CBC Hamilton, Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc Miller’s office said the international student visa program “had become overheated and misused in certain regions, including Ontario.”

“Our message to the provinces and the post-secondary institutions is clear: the days of doing business by putting profit above the education and well-being of students is over. For our part, we are taking steps to ensure and restore the integrity of the international student program,” Miller’s office said, adding he warned the ministry “would intervene and protect the program, including the use of blunt policy instruments under federal jurisdiction, if students continued being inadequately supported” last fall.

Armstrong said Mohawk’s goal with international education has been to “internationalize and bring diversity to our college community,” as well as to align enrolments with local labour-market needs.

When asked if the college erred in turning to international students the way it did, Armstrong said he thinks Mohawk has been “responsible” and “measured” compared to other institutions.

“I don’t think we’ve made an error in judgment at all and I don’t think looking back we would have done anything differently up until this point.”

Government changes criticized

Armstrong is also critical of the government’s changes. For example, he said, reductions in the number of programs for which international students can obtain post-graduate work permits don’t make sense to him. 

Mohawk currently offers 158 programs. Last year, there were 130 eligible for post-graduate work permits. Now, 41 are eligible, meaning there’s less incentive for students who want to stay in Canada to come in. Of those he said, some programs he considers crucial to the labour market, such as early childhood education were excluded.

Miller’s office said it plans to annually “refresh” the list of eligible fields it considers for permits, taking feedback into account. It added that changes to the post-graduate work permits do not prevent grads from accessing work permits under Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program or the International Mobility Program.

The office did not specifically address why it excluded colleges’ early-childhood education programs.

In an email, Dayna Smockum, a spokesperson for Ontario Minister of Colleges and Universities Nolan Quinn said “funding for post-secondary institutions is higher than it’s ever been,” adding the province invested $1.3 billion to “stabilize the sector” earlier this year.

“The federal government unilaterally made the decision to restrict the number of international student visas, and we are continuing to work with the sector to ensure the long-term vitality of our post-secondary institutions.”

However, Steve Orsini, president of the Council of Ontario Universities, says public funding has been declining since 2006 on a per-student basis, leading to “a decade of financial constraints.” His organization represents 20 publicly funded universities.

In 2023, an expert panel recommended increasing per-student funding and ending a tuition freeze. Orsini said the province has not enacted those recommendations.

The result, he said, is that 10 universities had deficits of more than $300 million last year. And now thanks to the international student changes, his organization has warned, Ontario universities are projecting losses of more than $300 million in the 2024-2025 school year, and more than $600 million the following year.

Orsini describes the federal changes as “blunt.”

“The federal government needed to target the bad actors. The approach they took targeted the good performers,” he said.

CBC Hamilton requested an interview from Colleges Ontario, which represents colleges, but did not receive a response prior to publication.

Cuts needed to protect college long-term: Armstrong

Armstrong said layoffs at Mohawk will be evenly felt and that managers will not be spared at the expense of workers.

Giardine-Tuck said the union is trusting them on that. She and Lau said they’ll be working to ensure members understand the rights in their collective agreements. 

It’s better for Mohawk to make changes now to avoid worse pain later on, Armstrong said, but the short-term impacts will be “very serious.”

“There will be things that we can no longer do at Mohawk that are going to be seen as potentially a takeaway from our students, and from our community more generally.”