Going to college in Ontario shouldn’t make you feel like just a number. And working at one shouldn’t end as just another tally in a growing list of layoffs.
Our colleges were built to equip students to enter the workforce and, in turn, build Ontario’s future.
Today, they’re cash-grabs – because the Ford government set them up like a house of cards and walked away from its responsibility to fund them.
And as of today, nearly all of Ontario’s 24 public colleges have announced some combination of devastating program closures, campus closures, and layoffs.
It would take $1.4 billion of immediate bridge funding to stop the cuts and save programs and jobs, and another $1.34 billion to bring per-student funding up to the national average.
Tuition fee revenue has tripled across the colleges since 2010, while provincial funding decreased by 28%. Ontario ranks dead-last among the provinces for per-student funding: $8,411 short of the national average. Since Ford’s election in 2018, international enrolment has tripled, while domestic enrollment is down by 20%. The college system accumulated a record surplus of $1 billion in 2023-24 alone. If invested like annual surpluses in years prior, that’s going to capital assets (i.e. more buildings.) Tuition should go back into the classroom and support services, not towards new vanity projects or administrative bloat.
Send a message to the province here: https://opseu.org/saveourcolleges