A Timmins college is concerned about what limiting the number of international student visas being issued will mean for future students, though it's too soon for the school to know the full impact.
Through the public-private partnerships being targeted in a federal announcement earlier this week, Northern College has seen its enrolment triple in the past decade and its revenue for international programs increase by $55 million from 2022 to 2023.
In a statement issued today (Jan. 25), Northern College said it’s particularly concerned about the impact the announcement will have on students currently confirming their enrolment as they are in the middle of the acceptance and registration process for future semesters.
On Monday, Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller announced a cap on the number of international students that can get visas and changed the rules concerning post-graduation work permits (PGWP) — students who begin study through public-private college partnership programs as of September will not be eligible.
The cap — 360,000 approvals for 2024, divvied up between provinces on the basis of population — will result in a 50 per cent decrease in permits in Ontario, which accepts by far the most international students, compared to 35 per cent overall. Current permit holders and those seeking master’s and doctoral degrees will not be included in the cap.
In 2021-22, provincial data show Northern College had 3,378 people on student visas. The numbers are the headcount in the fall of the school year and not available yet for the 2022-23 school year.
“Northern is working diligently to keep students — both current and future — apprised of these policy changes and how it affects them,” reads the Northern College statement issued today.
After surveying available housing for new people, the college had started reducing the international enrolment at the Timmins campus before this week's announcement. The spring and summer intake were also eliminated "to allow northern communities to adjust to the current student population."
The school said it's "always followed every guideline that has been established with our private partnership."
That partnership is with Pures College, a private career school in Scarborough. Pures is a designated learning institute (DLI) where students can attend its Toronto campus and receive a Northern College diploma.
From the 2012-13 school year to 2021-22, Northern College tripled its enrolment at all of its campuses — growing from 1,305 students in 2012-13 to 4,234 in 2021-22. The peak was in 2020-21 when 5,450 students were enrolled.
The public-private partnership
Northern’s numbers include a massive increase at the Pures campus.
The partnerships between publicly funded colleges and private schools have been a provincial political issue for years.
Back in 2016, the then-Liberal Ontario government announced a review of the six public-private college partnerships that existed then. It found the arrangements presented too much risk to the quality of education and the reputation of the colleges and the province's post-secondary sector as a whole. It ordered them to shut down by 2018, with some compensation — but by then, the Progressive Conservative government was in power and reversed the wind-down order.
In 2019, the provincial PC government encouraged the partnerships.
The goal was to help the public colleges be more financially competitive and allow them to reinvest back into campuses and local communities. The government said at the time that the partnerships would encourage international students to study at campuses outside the GTA and potentially stay there after graduation.
For Northern College, it said that Pures and international students are very important to the school.
"With the continued decline in domestic students over the past few years, we have had to replace these declines with international students to ensure we remain sustainable," the school said in response to TimminsToday questions.
"Tuition cuts and freezes have not helped the matter.
"We’ve had to become entrepreneurial and find other means to remain competitive and attract students to communities to help with the declining domestic population and to help meet labour market needs for our region."
At Northern College, while the number of students has increased through the Pures partnership — the majority aren’t based in the north.
Northern's main campus is in Timmins. It also has campuses in Haileybury, Kirkland Lake and Moosonee, along with sites through Contact North in various locations.
In 2019-2020, the total full-time enrolment in the fall was 1,534 students. Of those, 1,030 were in Timmins.
The first year that students are listed at Pures is in 2020-21.
That year, when the student enrolment more than tripled, of the 5,450 student headcount, 840 people were in Timmins and 4,088 at Pures. For 2021-22, the data show that of the 4,234 full-time students, 3,099 were at Pures and 631 were in Timmins.
Student visa controversy
Student visas put the local college in the spotlight last year.
In August 2023, the acceptance letters for 503 international students — mostly from India — enrolled in Northern College programs at Pures College after the number of student visas issued by the Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) far exceeded the school’s capacity to run programs.
In November, the conditional offers of 211 people who hadn’t secured the required student visa were deferred after Northern College realized it couldn’t support the numbers projected for January 2024.
Miller has likened the "bad actor" schools being targeted in the announcement to "puppy mills" and on Monday described them as private colleges offering "sham commerce degrees" in office space above massage parlours that no one actually goes to, with their students driving Ubers instead.
For the students who had their student visas deferred in November, Northern College told TimminsToday that it believes many already have approved visas, though it needs to verify it.
"The implications of this announcement and change in policy are far-reaching and at this point in time, difficult to quantify entirely until more details are made available," said the college.
As early as last fall, the federal government was hinting that bigger changes for the student visa program were on the way.
In November, the IRCC told TimminsToday that it was working on a new framework to avoid issues like what happened in the summer of 2023.
Starting Dec. 1, acceptance letters for international students needed to be confirmed with IRCC directly by institutions.
For Northern's part, it did start to implement change ahead of this week's announcement.
It's voluntarily taking part in a pilot program to establish international quality assurance measures for post-secondary education in Ontario. It includes an audit of student support to create guidelines and increased services.
“Sustainable growth and program excellence has been at the heart of all initiatives undertaken,” reads the college's statement.
“At this point in time, there is very little detail on the nuances of this latest announcement and its implementation, and Northern College is concerned about the effects this will have on training of workforce, as well as economic development in the north.”
The financial benefits
Northern College’s financial statements for 2022 and 2023 record a huge financial payoff through the private college partnership.
The tuition and fees for students enrolled at Pures are included in the international programs and other revenue. In 2023, the college revenue for this line was $84 million, up from $28.7 million in 2022.
Overall the college’s revenue more than doubled year-over-year.
In 2023, the total revenue was $142 million compared to $69 million the year before.
The expenses for those years were $112.9 million in 2023 and $55 million in 2022.
This week's announcement could mean that Northern College has to cancel some capital projects.
"We utilized the revenue source from our private partnership to fund capital improvements at our northern campuses," wrote the college.
"We will need to re-examine what we will tackle as projects in the future if we don’t have this revenue coming in anymore."
As for the overall deal with Pures, the college says it's too early to tell the impact of the changes.
"Until we get a better handle on how the provincial government will be dividing up the visas for Ontario, we won’t know what effect this will have on the partnership," said the school.
Program interest shifts
The change in the student demographic shifted the popularity of programs.
For the provincial data available — from the 2012-13 school year to 2021-22 — most Northern College students are between the ages of 20 to 24 years.
In 2012-13, the total enrolment at Northern College was 1,305. The most popular program was collaborative nursing — with 159 students — followed by social service worker at 131 students.
In 2019-20, the year before the drastic increase in student visas being issued, those two programs still had the highest enrolment, with social service worker diploma at 213 students and collaborative nursing at 103.
The top programs in the following two years were business and computer engineering technology. There were also 1,340 listed as not available/not applicable.
- With files from The Trillium
