Here’s what Algonquin College president Claude Brulé had to say about how the college is tackling its dire financial situation.
Algonquin College president Claude Brulé has recommended suspending 37 programs.
If approved by the board of governors on Feb. 24, these programs will start wrapping up this fall as the college grapples with a lack of funding it blames on a steep decline in international students and a provincial tuition freeze.
The college is also offering a “targeted retirement departure initiative” for employees over the age of 50 and a “voluntary exit registry” in which employees willing to depart the college can receive a modest financial incentive for doing so.
There are other measures in play, but layoffs are “unavoidable,” says Brulé.
We sat down with Brulé to ask the rationale behind his recommendations and what’s next for Algonquin.
Q: I want to make sure that I understand this correctly. The programs will be suspended. That means that when this cohort has graduated, the programs will be closed. They will not be reopened at some later date?
A: I made a distinction between the six (out of the 37 programs). They will continue to be offered at another campus. A version will continue to exist. There are two in Pembroke. They will stop being offered in Pembroke, but they’ll be offered either at this campus or online.
But the other 31 programs, after we’re done with the students who are in the current program, then those will be canceled, not coming back.
Q: Can you tell me how the decisions were made about which programs to suspend?
A: Two issues confronted our staff. There is the slow erosion of our funding, first of all, from the province. Over time, that made it very difficult to offer some programs of study. Second, sudden decisions this past year by Immigration Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to reduce the number of student visas they were issuing, and also limit the number of post graduate work permits to specific programs and that shut out entire schools for us.
The School of Business, for instance, School of Hospitality and Tourism, Media and Design, many of those program areas no longer have their programs eligible for the postgraduate work permit, so they’re less attractive to international students, meaning that if we have a lot of international students in those programs, that’s going to go to zero next year. Right away, you see the financials of those programs just tank.
And so that’s what made those decisions. The criteria was financial, the fact that they weren’t eligible for postgraduate permits. And in some instances, the labor market information is also telling us the outcomes for the students were dwindling as well.
The tuition the students pay today is the same tuition they paid in 2015 and then intervening years. Ten years of inflation amounts to 25 per cent. I’ve done the math. So I get 75 cents in revenue from tuition. I have $1 expense to pay today, so the math just does not add up. It’s very difficult to make ends meet.
On top of that, our grant is fixed. It’s not even adjusted for inflation. And so whether I increase my domestic student population, I got the same amount of money.
Evening Update
Q: How is this going to affect the student population permanently?
A: Domestically, we’re going to be okay, because our population in Ottawa and the region is fairly stable. In fact, we saw for this winter, a 4 per cent increase year-over- year compared to last year. So I think domestically, we’ll be fine.
Internationally, we’ve lost 13 per cent of the international students this year compared to last year. Next year, we’ll be about 40 per cent fewer students, and the year after, 16 per cent.
Our ratio between domestic and international was one of the lowest in the province. We were recruiting reasonably responsibly. We weren’t one of the institutions that had a very disproportionate amount of international-to-domestic. That ratio will continue to shrink now, because domestically, we’re holding our own. We’re at about 30 per cent right now of international students to domestic, and in two years time, we’ll be at about 20-to-80.
Q: Any idea how many staff you expect will exit through the two departure measures you announced?
A: At this point, no, because those are still in play, we’re still receiving applications from employees again, we hope that people will take us up on these offers, especially in impacted areas, because this will make a difference in terms of potential layoffs down the road.
The more people can take a retirement package or a departure package, it will mean fewer people will need to be laid off. Eventually, the layoffs will vary in terms of when they will occur, because if a program of studies is three years in duration, we will be teaching out that program over a three-year period.
The layoffs would not occur immediately. But in other areas, let’s say, if it’s a function that we stopped doing now, where we said, “This is this is something we have to stop doing,” those layoffs will occur more quickly.
I can’t give you a number and say this is how many we’re planning to lay off for two reasons. One, we’re trying to mitigate this with other measures. And two, they’re going to take place over time. So we’re still analyzing what that’s going to look like, because we’re going to have attrition as well. And that will mean fewer layoffs as well, if we don’t replace those positions.
Q: Are layoffs inevitable?
A: There will be some, absolutely.
That will take time in any unionized environment. We have collective agreements. Those processes are well described, and we have a process to working with our union leadership to make sure that we do well by our employees. And so we’ll be adhering to those collective agreements and working through that process. Which, again, takes a while to get through.
Q: There will be another board of governors meeting in April. What will happen then?
A: That is to pass our budget. It will include the measures that we’re able to quantify to demonstrate how we’re bringing down the size of our deficit.
We will have a deficit for 2025-26, I cannot deny that, but you know, it will be mitigated. We will bring about many of the measures we spoke of and the ones that are included in my announcement. Those will be incorporated in the calculations to reduce that deficit.
It will not bring that deficit to zero. There are more measures we need to continue to put in place for the following year, and we’ll be announcing those, I would say, probably in three to four months.
Q: We are in the midst of a provincial election. Is there any indication that there may be a plan from any of the parties that could help to prevent what’s happening system-wide for colleges in Ontario?
A: I’d like to remain optimistic that we’re going to be able to inform the candidates of all parties about what’s happening in post secondary Ontario. I’m certainly meeting with all the candidates, both in Ottawa and the (Ottawa) Valley to let them know what the issues are, hoping that this will resonate with them and as they form their platform in this particular area. Hopefully it will include measures to stem what we’re seeing right now.
Q: Is there anything Algonquin College will be able to do long-term to ensure it’s less dependent on factors like the province or the federal government stopping sources of revenue?
A: I’m looking at diversifying our sources of revenue, because it’s important we understand the situation with the international student program. Federally, we were one of the least dependent on that.
But you know, we’re a large college. So even though, percentage-wise, we were one of the lowest in terms of international-to-domestic students, it’s still a large number of international students.
Domestically, the province needs to change its funding model for its post secondary institutions, that much is clear. This was presented in the blue ribbon panel that the government itself commissioned and then chose to only partially respond to this past year. The amount of money that they targeted in that response is a fraction of what’s needed to sustain the post secondary system in Ontario, and especially colleges.
We are an agent of the crown, so we’re we’re not going to walk away from our provincial obligation, but it’s important for us to continue to diversify our sources of revenue to make sure that we’re not too dependent on one particular stream.
Q: The province announced $1.3 billion in additional funding for colleges and universities in February 2024. How much did Algonquin get out of that?
A:$4 million. It covers inflation for one year.
Q: Are Algonquin’s real estate assets going to be under-utilized, given the program changes?
A: We’re going to analyze that. The first thing to do is look at the programming that we are going to offer. And let’s face it, yes, I am getting out of some programs, but I’m also going to be launching new programs, because I have to continuously look at what our employer community needs now and into the future.
We’re going to continue to bring a different mix of programming to our range. We will add demands on our assets, our facilities. At the end of the day, we’re going to analyze to see if there are opportunities to perhaps consolidate some of our activities in fewer buildings. And perhaps, if we have a building that is a lot of deferred maintenance, very inefficient from an energy consumption perspective, we will see what we could do to get out of it.
There’s actually building going on. We’re adding to our campus. We have programming that we’re introducing that we know is in demand, and we’re building at a suite of science labs, new chemistry labs, new biotech labs. We’re going to be revamping our paramedicine area as well. So we need to constantly invest in new in additions, to looking at our program mix and deciding what needs to come off our programming mix.
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