BURST
Amid numerous reports of cuts to staff and programs at universities and colleges across B.C., the provincial government is undertaking a review into the sustainability of the post-secondary sector and blaming the problems on federal caps on international students.
In January 2024, the federal government announced it was placing a two-year cap on international students that would reduce undergraduate student permits across the country by 35 per cent in the first year. In this year’s budget, it reduced the number of permits by a further 65 per cent.
Schools like Simon Fraser University, Vancouver Island University and Camosun College have been forced to cut positions and programs due to lower revenue.
Experts and students have argued for years that the current post-secondary funding model is unsustainable and that the real problem facing universities and colleges is a lack of government funding.
B.C. Post-Secondary Education Minister Jessie Sunner, however, disagreed when asked whether that was part of the problem and whether the province would do anything about it.
“Institutions are facing serious financial challenges, including as a result of the federal government’s cuts to international student study permits,” she said. “These situations, tied with global economic challenges, declining domestic enrolment, along with the impacts that institutions are still recovering from the pandemic, have really increased the amount of revenue losses institutions are experiencing.”
Don Avison, chairperson of the board of directors for Emily Carr University and a former deputy minister of education, has been tasked with leading the review, which will focus on streamlining university governance, delivering programs effectively within existing budgets and addressing financial challenges in both the short- and long-term.
A final report is due by March 15, 2026, meaning that any recommendations are unlikely to make their way into the spring budget.
Sunner acknowledged that there had previously been a review of the current funding model for post-secondary institutions in 2022. No final report from that review was ever released.
“That review that was previously done was looking at one part of the entire sector. So this is a very different review where we need to look at the entire sector holistically,” she said. “Also the circumstances in which that review were done were very different. We did not have this pressure from international student visa cuts at that time. Economically, it was just different.”
The B.C. Federation of Students and professors at numerous universities have argued that funding for public institutions has stagnated over the last 20 years, with the percentage of operating revenue covered by the government dropping from 68 per cent in 2000 to 40 per cent this year.
According to ministry data, core operational funding for post-secondary institutions was relatively stagnant between 2011 and 2017 at between $1.86 billion and $1.87 billion, gradually increasing between 2017 and 2024, and a large infusion of cash in last year’s budget brought the total to $3.12 billion.
Cole Reinbold, secretary-treasurer of the B.C. Federation of Students, said the problem with those figures is that that funding increase has been targeted at increasing wages and increasing seats in specific programs, citing the government’s own news release about the review.
She said many schools make up the funding gap by increasing the number of international students they enrol and raising tuition levels for non-domestic students.
Reinbold is worried that the new review will lead to a tuition increase for domestic students beyond the current annual limit of two per cent, especially given the province has indicated that any new funding sources will not come as a result of additional government money.
“What this means is that students and families who are already paying more than their fair share are being asked to solve a crisis that government underfunding created,” she said. “You don’t get more nurses, more trades people, more teachers, by cutting off programs and raising tuition, you get them by funding colleges and universities properly.”