Remember about a month ago when I noted how several Ontario colleges now had international student numbers above 50% of total enrolment?  And about how in some cases this was being done by small town colleges establishing “partnerships” with private vocational colleges in the Greater Toronto Area?  How they were effectively warehousing international students at these locations, charging them full tuition, and paying the private college to teach some allegedly bespoke curriculum while pocketing the difference?

Two pieces of news.

The first is that someone has kindly given me a copy of the 2017 report which led to the previous government banning these kinds of partnerships (technically, they called for a moratorium for 2018 and a wind-down starting in 2019).  I don’t think it’s secret, per se, but nor has it ever been made public, as far as I know.  This is typical behaviour for Ontario, where on no account can any policy actually be developed openly (the bipartisan commitment to making university policy behind closed doors is truly impressive).  I have posted it here.  But let me give you some excerpts from the conclusions, starting on p.51:

“The Partnerships do not serve an important purpose and are an inefficient way to provide needed revenue to colleges”

“The Partnerships pose risks that are inherently difficult to manage”

“Current regulation is inadequate”

“There is good reason to believe that regulating this activity would be extremely challenging”

“The risks potentially affect all colleges, not just the ones with private partners”

“The risks potentially affect the government”

“Without timely action, the risks will become larger”

Now, literally nothing has changed in the two and a half years since this was written, other than that these colleges have been allowed to grow.  So, it was with no little anticipation that I opened the government’s media release last week about its “new policy” on the matter.  The media release mentions no policy details at all other than “there is a new policy” (again, all must occur in darkness), but the gist is clear enough: the Ford government has no interest in addressing any of the issues raised in the 2017 report.  It’s full steam ahead, “cutting red tape”, “removing barriers” to creating “innovative and entrepreneurial partnerships”.

So, I emailed the ministry for the actual policy.  What I got back was a two-page memo which looks to me like a cover-letter to an actual policy document rather than an actual document (judge for yourself here).  It says almost nothing other than that the government is going to cap enrolment at these partnership campuses at 2x the enrolment of the home campus. 

Nothing about quality assurance.  Nothing about reducing risk.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  Because the Ontario government simply Does. Not. Care.   

The entire rationale here is that rural colleges are expensive to maintain, and the government does not want to spend the money necessary to maintain them the way the colleges themselves wish to be maintained (the colleges in question have been screaming poverty to their MPPs for several years but so far as I know, no actual independent needs assessment has ever been done to see if maybe they don’t need quite so much money).   The colleges present under-regulated colleges which warehouse international students in dubious conditions as a solution.  A Conservative government gratefully says yes.

The Ontario government is explicitly selling out international students and creating systemic reputational risks for all Ontario colleges, just to paper over problems created by its own funding policies.    This is a terrible idea.  Just as it was two and a half years ago.