Hi all.  Just a short note before getting into this blog post that we at HESA Towers are trying something a bit new.  On Thursday, we are hosting an online meeting for everyone across the country who is interested in institutional policies on teaching and learning with respect to AI programs based on Large Language Models.  Want to know how many institutions are seeing the issue mainly as a plagiarism problem and how many are seeing it as an opportunity to innovate in teaching learning?  Join us and help create a new policy community devoted to sharing good practice in this area.  Just fill in the form here to register for Thursday’s session.

Now back to your regularly scheduled blog.

New Ontario college enrolment data is out!  I know I do this every year, and some of you must be sick of it by now.  But enrolment is the most important issue in Canadian post-secondary education right now, the one thing that could seriously blow the whole financial basis of the system sky-high, so it’s worth paying attention. 

The new data comes from the Ontario Open Data portal, and it covers the year 2021-22 – that is the second year of COVID.  It only covers full-time students, but the more detailed data set including part-timers from Statscan will not be out for another eight months.

Figure 1 shows the FT enrolments by institution and by type of enrolment.  Three institutions do not provide a complete breakdown by visa status: Seneca, Centennial and Loyalist.  The first two list a significant portion of their students as being “unknown”; the latter lists about two-thirds of students as “other”.  My read of the data is that Centennial’s “unknown” numbers are almost certainly international students; it is less clear – but still possible – that the Loyalist and Seneca numbers at least partially represent international students. 

Figure 1: Ontario College Enrolments by Source, 2021-22

In figure 2, I show international students as a % of total by institution, with Loyalist, Centennial and Seneca shown as if the “unknown/other” numbers are in fact international students.  The system-wide figure is a whopping 43%, with nine institutions posting international student numbers of 50% plus, with both Lambton and Northern over 80%.  If in fact the “unknown” numbers at those three institutions are all domestic students (which seems unlikely), that would reduce the system-wide number to 29% and reduce the number with over 50% international to six institutions.  My guess is that the true figure is a lot closer to 43% than 9%, but unfortunately, we won’t know for sure until December or so. 

Figure 2: International Students as a Percentage of Total Enrolments, by Institution

Want to see numbers over time?  Figure 3 has you covered.  The increase in international students is important here, but equally important – and vastly under-reported – is the question of declining domestic enrolments.  There are two possible explanations here.  The first is that international students are replacing international students, and the second is that the rise of international students in the Ontario college sector is merely coincident with the fall in domestic students.  On the whole, I suspect the answer is closer to the latter than the former, but either way, this is a hugestory.  Even if the decline is entirely due to a change in demand rather than a change in supply, we’re talking about a 21% drop in the number of Ontario students wanting a college education.  That’s a big deal.  Yet, it is not an issue which has yet penetrated far into the public discourse.

Figure 3: Domestic v. international Students, Ontario Colleges, 2012-13 to 2021-22

Second-last thought here: those two lines in figure 3?  They’re going to converge soon.  Folks who I speak to in the college sector suggest the enrolment figure this year was 45% or even higher.  None of them think we’re passing 50% any later than 2023-24.  At which point: is the sector even really Ontarian anymore?  Let alone a public Ontario system? 

Last thought: if you don’t think the Ontario college sector affects your institution because you’re a university, or in another province, consider the following.   Provincial and federal governments are both under intense pressure to do something about runaway housing costs – in particular, rental housing.  Obviously, the long-term answer is more housing construction.  But in the short term, the feds have very few levers available to them.  One of those levers is international student visas.  Do not be surprised if those get capped one day because of the blind lust for dollars that Ontario colleges are collectively displaying with respect to international students (probably likelier under a Poilievre government than a Trudeau one, but I wouldn’t rule the latter out entirely).

Does your institution have a Government Relations strategy for that?  Didn’t think so.  And that’s why everyone needs to care about how Ontario colleges are behaving on this file.

Erratum: Last Tuesday, I wrote about cutbacks at a variety of Canadian institutions.  Some have written to suggest that I got some details wrong.  With respect to the University of Victoria, I said the institution had run a deficit and was making cuts to eliminate it. In fact, while there were significant expenditure reductions, they were in reaction to an in-year deficit rather than an end-of year deficit (that is, the university’s expenditure reductions were preventative rather than reactive).  With respect to University of Guelph, I described the university as having entered a relationship with the pathway provider Navitas; in fact, this relationship is still under consideration and no deal has yet been signed.  I regret the errors.