Ontario’s Public Colleges at a Crossroads: Navigating the Crisis and Building a brighter Future
Ontario’s public college system is facing an unprecedented crisis – and at the root is the province walking away from its responsibility to fund education.
It doesn’t have to be this way. OPSEU/SEFPO has been working diligently for months to map a different path forward. The end result is in hand: a comprehensively researched policy paper that maps the past, present, and future of Ontario’s college system.
Willful neglect: The Story of How We Got Here
Since the college systems’ inception, government support for our colleges has dropped from three-quarters of operating costs to less than 30%. Coupled with the Ford government’s embrace of deregulation and privatization policies, college operations became sustained on unregulated international student tuition – setting up the system like a house of cards.
What’s happening to post-secondary education in Ontario is not happening anywhere else in Canada. Ontario comes dead-last for per-student funding among the provinces. Since 2010, tuition fees increased by a staggering 200% in Ontario compared to an average increase of 43% everywhere else.When Ontario’s colleges were established in the 1960s, it was widely recognized that colleges were to be a public good offering accessible, hands-on practical training, generating a sustainable labour force, and creating jobs directly in our communities. Today, the province has opted to encourage the privatization and exploitation of international student enrollment rather than providing sustainable, long-term public investment.
The result? Record surpluses for college administrations – profits that were not reinvested in classrooms or student services. Instead, the money was used to expand administrative ranks and amass capital reserves, while class sizes grew, and precarious contract faculty positions mushroomed.Now, with federal restrictions on international student permits, Ontario’s public colleges are facing an immediate funding shortfall, with 21 colleges announcing program closures, 11 threatening layoffs, and 14 having reduced the contracts of partial-load faculty members. In addition, 9 colleges have let go of support staff and 8 have plans to reduce staff complement. These numbers are growing month by month.Instead of providing emergency funding to stabilize the system, the Ford government has abandoned our colleges in the middle of an unnecessary snap election – forcing them into austerity-driven program cuts and staffing reductions that threaten the core mission of accessible, community-oriented post-secondary education.This crisis is not inevitable, it is manufactured: caused by a deliberate political and financial strategy that must be reversed through collective action and public investment.
Colleges must be held accountable, and the province must be pressured to increase funding to the national average to protect jobs, programs, and student success.The crisis in Ontario’s public colleges is no accident—it is the result of deliberate government policy and administrative mismanagement. It’s a classic conservative play to dismantle public goods: underfund, deregulate, and leverage the resulting crisis to clear the path for privatization.But this moment presents an opportunity: by mobilizing at the local, divisional, and sector-wide levels,
we can push for real solutions and demand that Ontario reinvests in its public colleges.Faculty, staff, students, and the broader public must stand together to protect the integrity of post-secondary education and ensure that Ontario’s colleges serve their communities—not corporate interests.