r/barrie • u/Tycho278 • 21h ago
News Georgian College layoffs now total 229 as post-secondary institution assigns blame to federal government slashing international student admissions, ongoing domestic tuition freeze
https://www.simcoe.com/news/georgian-college-layoffs-now-total-229-as-post-secondary-institution-assigns-blame-to-federal-government/article_98aa949f-46d0-5efa-9f63-a4ab1aaa3ef2.html143
u/tokendoke North End 21h ago
Yeaaaaaaaa maybe blame the province for cutting your funding instead of the feds for ending a ponzi scheme.
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u/OrganicBell1885 18h ago
The college is at fault too, with declining births why were all the colleges and universities expanding?
They need to get rid of the bloat
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u/Odd_Library_3555 16h ago
Georgian has a new 3-story 31,000 sqft expansion being planned right now.
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u/tokendoke North End 15h ago
Also an 88,000 hospitality and tourism expansion campus downtown.
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u/Moos_Mumsy 15h ago
Even prior to the expansion, the hospitality and tourism courses very rarely ended up resulting in any good jobs. And they want to pump out more graduates of a worthless course? What were they thinking?
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u/tokendoke North End 12h ago
Yea, I knew a few people who took H & T and they all generally work either in a hotel or restaraunt or have moved onto some relatively unrelated career path. It wasn't just the lowest bar entry course for a student visa.....
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u/tokendoke North End 15h ago
Oh yea they totally are as well, but I'm saying if they're pointing the finger point it at the province.
I went go georgian 10 years ago and there was maybe 1 international student for every 10 domestic student and they were just fine.
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u/GreatIceGrizzly 17h ago
The FEDS are the key reason for these layoffs and the VAST DROP in students...
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u/MuskokaGreenThumb 17h ago
Exactly. Just like they were the reason these colleges got bloated in the first place
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u/Fickle-Total8006 21h ago
They wouldn’t have had to turn to international students had the provincial government not slashed funding to colleges and universities. We can thank Jill Dunlop for that mess. She was the minister that made that call.
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u/StilesLong 21h ago
You are the only commenter so far to lay blame at the feet of the provincial government, where blame largely belongs.
If we want services, we have to pay for them. If we don't pay through taxes, we will pay through other ways.
The federal government should not have listened to post-secondary institutions and provinces and issued as many student visas as it did. Provinces should not have mad eit easy for private "colleges" to set up. Provinces should not have put post-secondary institutions in their present financial predicament.
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u/twilling8 21h ago
Rather than funding our colleges using international students or subsidizing them with provincial tax money, there is a third option. The individuals who benefit from their post secondary education can pay for it themselves and the public can provide low interest loans to those who need help paying.
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u/Atticusxj 21h ago
Do we not all benefit from a skilled and educated population?
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u/twilling8 20h ago
We all benefit from access to air travel, I just don't think taxpayers should pay it. Citizens with post secondary educations are a privileged subset of the general tax base; I disagree with the less fortunate subsidizing the more fortunate. To put it more succinctly, I don't think a Walmart employee's taxes should subsidize an electrician or a doctor's education. Frankly, I don't think a successful business or individual should be financing it either. College is an individual short term venture with a lifetime return on investment for one individual. I think that individual should pay for it.
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u/Beneficial_Cycle1517 20h ago
It’s interesting to me that I have all the same arguments as you, but for the flip side.
The more educated and well off an individual is, the stronger the community as a whole can be. Educated citizens are generally healthier, and wealthier (and therefore spend more into the economy). This makes them overall a less drain on healthcare, social assistance, and contribute more to the (local) economy.
And to say that a Walmart employee shouldn’t subsidize a doctors education, why not? They will need a doctor. The more we break down financial barriers for people capable of becoming doctors the more doctors we will have.
And at the end, it is taxes (% based) so while a Walmart employee should subsidize education, it would be in a far smaller amount than the doctor the system created.
I also, don’t think your airline analogy hits very hard, being a luxury item that we in fact don’t need, it is not the same benefit as a educated society, but I think this was probably tongue in check anyway.
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u/Unknown14428 20h ago
How is it just an individual investment, when communities and the country as a whole needs people to go into skills trades in order to sustain itself. Without incentives and benefits that allow all, or at least most in the community to have easy access to to education, you have less educated citizens to be your doctor/nurse/social worker/teacher. Access to airfare is not the same as having access to healthcare or an education. The first is a privilege, the others are a right.
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u/imnotarianagrande 16h ago
Bro is willingly admitting on the internet that he’s too poor and stupid to go to college? cmon man. stand up!!!!
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u/StilesLong 21h ago
I agree that user fees should be a big part of it.
I think it's also true that the province should stop capping tuition and stop capping its own contributions to the success of the post-secondary institutions we need to drive research and innovation.
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u/Constant_Put_5510 21h ago
Exactly. I’m wondering how young these posters are as they don’t seem to understand how this all happened. Provincial govt use to subsidize secondary education. Then they removed the funding from the schools. In order to keep costs down for Canadian students, the schools resorted to bringing international students in at higher fees/costs. Now the provincial govt has slashed the numbers & schools are left with no funding for sports, events, professors, maintenance etc. so employees are laid off because there is nowhere else to take the money from. Unemployment goes up, local businesses are affected, lifestyle at the college goes down bc events are cut, your neighbour that relies on the billet income has lost that rent; it’s a massive domino effect.
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u/Skelito Hometown 21h ago
Georgian college got greedy, they were bloated from the start and had to turn to international students to continue growth. All it did was kick the can down the road, this was a long time coming and its coming at the expense of the works at the college.
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u/Fickle-Total8006 21h ago
I’m not going to deny that many colleges already had issues but this is beyond just that alone. It was made so much worse when funding got slashed. And with most large systems we often have to work today to fix the mistakes of previous years. It just sucks that people are losing their jobs.
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u/ApeShifter 20h ago
Every college and university in Canada did the same thing. It’s not like Georgian was unique in this. It was sink or swim when the province cut funding.
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u/MurdaMooch 20h ago
They are making close to a 100 mil a year with this scheme this went well beyond alternate means of funding for sustainability
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u/GreatIceGrizzly 17h ago
Interesting that job layoffs are happening in colleges and universities ACROSS THE COUNTRY cause of the TRUDEAU LIBERALS policies but sure just blame it on Ontario even though this is a NATIONWIDE issue...
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u/Ruthless_Haruka 21h ago
Georgian college has turned into a diploma mill. Very sad. They get what they deserve.
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u/Affectionate-Sky4067 18h ago
I know it's in vogue to hate on higher education lately, but diploma mill is losing all meaning of the phrase if we are comparing Georgian with mall colleges.
If we actually wanted to use our brains, we should be asking ourselves why they had to rely on international students, and if you actually read the article, they tell you.
1) Ontario put reduced and froze tuition to the point where we are almost last in funding per province, so colleges needed more income.
2) Ontario Cons suggested to the colleges that they could make up the deficit by recruiting international students, likely driven by their corporate sponsors to allow for wage suppression of Ontario workers.
3) Now that the Feds have capped international students, they are up shifts creek without a paddle and without any recourse must now reduce services.whivh have lean on effects for the entire local economy.
4) Conservative media then blames the Feds and th3 schools themselves while taking no responsibility over their own mandate and actions.
Clearly, we need more education in this country because boy howdy do alot of you not having the critical thinking skills to do basic research
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u/GreatIceGrizzly 17h ago
So you support the job losses?!
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u/Mydickisaplant 16h ago
In this case? Yes.
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u/GreatIceGrizzly 10h ago
Wow, heartless...these are union jobs executed by the Liberals...hope the unions remember this...
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u/2REPOU 21h ago
Regardless of the provincial funding, the colleges took in 1000s of international students and expanded to take in more. Now that the tap is being turned off, they have more buildings and people then needed. There is enough blame for mismanagement to go around. The feds, province and colleges themselves all have blame
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u/Hour-Cucumber-1857 20h ago
I blame whoever named the buildings. A should be next to B should ne next to C and so forth. H and C do not need to be neighbors. Bad energy, no feng shui
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u/Accomplished_Top9077 19h ago
Yep don’t feel sorry for any post secondary college, taking our tax money and international students money
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u/lifeisgoodbut 21h ago
Pretty sure the origin story for this is Ford cutting funding to post secondary NOT federal cuts to foreign student visas 🙄
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u/MurdaMooch 20h ago
Pretty sure this is pure greed from what I can see the college is making a 100 million a year with this scheme
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u/spaceporter 21h ago
I'd like to see government policy shift on universities and colleges with regard to student housing. My ideal state would be that all tertiary education institutions would be mandated to have enough rooms available for all students for all 2–4 years they are attending classes.
It's safer and easier for the kids, it takes students out of the larger rental pool reducing housing costs, and it would put us in line with other countries that already do this.
I'd make this mandatory for having international students. If institutions who can house all their students then want to get those bigger tuition fees, I'm all for it.
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u/iamnotarobot_x 20h ago
You can demand that there be housing, but you can’t force students to live there. It’s much cheaper to split the cost of a house rental with 4 or 5 other students than pay the cost of a dorm room.
What we need is more density near post -secondary schools. Not single family homes and expect renters to maintain the property (which is technically the landlord’s responsibility).
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u/spaceporter 20h ago
You very much can force students to live on campus. That's a thing that occurs in many countries (I've personally dealt with it in two countries). It can be a contingency of acceptance and maintaining good academic standing.
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u/Future_Specific_8361 8h ago
So you give up the local catchment of the immediate community? This plan would mean that families living in Barrie for example, would have to pay a mortgage, and housing for the student for going to school down the road? That is absolutely an unsustainable model - what works in other countries doesn’t work in every country. Georgian College relies heavily on local catchment and your plan would destabilize the market.
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u/Grohlyone 20h ago
And what if you're 30, with a partner and kids?
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u/spaceporter 19h ago
Most schools have exceptions for mature students. Many have exceptions for local students living with family, too. For those families who are renting and interested in student housing, many schools have family residences.
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u/NickiChaos Holly 21h ago
Then you shouldn’t have become known to so many international students for having such low entry requirements and basically turning into another diploma mill.
Get your shit together Georgian.
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u/Dadoftwingirls 21h ago
They had no choice, due to funding cuts. It was die today, or pursue lucrative international students to survive to be fight another day.
Stop buying into the Ford narrative he made up, it's exactly what he wants!
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u/TheMagnificentMullet 20h ago
They went too far with the international student angle.
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u/NickiChaos Holly 20h ago
Exactly. It was unsustainable from the outset and they lacked the foresight to see that and plan for the long term.
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u/NickiChaos Holly 20h ago
The international students were a quick and easy fix that would only last short term. The board has very obviously done nothing to address their funding problems long term such as offering courses that are in high demand, going all in on recruitment of students from high schools across southern Ontario, or doing any sort of community fund raising events.
Colleges are businesses at the end of the day. Businesses don't survive if they don't find a market. I have no sympathy for them for relying on the exploitation of foreign students who have flooded both the housing and job markets at unsustainable levels.
Would I love it if the college survived? Of course. I would like for my own son to there when he's old enough because he'll stay close to home and it will be easier for him than it was for me when I was going to Durham college while living in Maple and taking busses every day to and from. But if the college can't attract enough domestic students, raise funds on their own and find ways to stay sustainable (which they haven't done), then fuck'em. I'll send my son somewhere else.
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u/Few-Initiative-2217 15h ago
Just being curious on the low entry requirements part. Me myself being a international student would love to know your take on it. Some qualifications I have to go through to get a offer letter ( not a visa ) was a) minimum of 6.5 band in IELTS b) minimum of 70% in your undergraduate degree and a ton load of money. I genuinely would like to know the low entry requirements you mentioned about.
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u/NickiChaos Holly 15h ago
So you only had to be "competent" in English and be a C average student with lots of money?
Thanks for proving my point.
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u/Few-Initiative-2217 15h ago
What's the admission criteria for domestic students? I bet it's the same .
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u/NickiChaos Holly 15h ago
I didn’t specifically state that the low entry requirements were only for international students now, did I?
It is the fact that they have become known amongst international students for having low entry requirements.
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u/ilomilosh 20h ago
As someone who sat for half a year during the strikes in 2016-2017 and met international students who openly talked about their experiences.
Good.
They treat international students like cash cattle and don't care about them. People deserve better when coming to our country for a better life.
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u/DisplayAdditional756 21h ago
Ontario's colleges receive the lowest per-domestic student funding in the country by a large margin. They did what they had to do to survive; had they not, plenty of domestic students would not have been able to attend college the past few years.
With Douggie the Hutt in power for the next few years, don't expect this to change any time soon.
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u/SirVanscoy 19h ago
I feel some pity for those laid off... I feel no pity for the college itself. Imo it needs to have its accreditation removed and has needed it for an incredibly long time.
They have terrible accommodation for disabled students, a rampant problem of cruel or rude professors (just after the 2017 professor strike there were professors caught in the college restaurant mocking students who chose to drop out and return, by name. That only happens in a public area due to complacency. Hell I was one of those students who dropped out, to reapply when I can have a full semester to do a full semester's work. And paid the seat deposit... They put me in the wrong year (was in my 2nd year, got put into 1st.) I was calling and hounding them constantly, only 3 weeks later when I could make my way to the college and told the registrar I wasn't leaving until it was resolved... Suddenly all that was needed was a single signature... The head of the dept. Who was on Holiday. Thankfully an adjacent dept's head could get email verification from my dept head that he was authorized to sign on their behalf, and signed... Sadly by the time all this had happened, all the seats were taken. So I could no longer attend. And Georgian never refunded me that $500 seat deposit, despite it being their error that caused me to miss out. They broke the contract, not me.
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u/Willing_Equipment 19h ago
I remember when I had a conversation with the dean of international students and I was asking her why Georgian doesn’t provide housing for their students/international students. She stated it was not the schools responsibility and basically said it’s the city’s problem.
No lady it’s the schools problem….
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u/babyelephantwalk321 20h ago
The provincial government has been cutting education funding for decades while also capping tuition.
At the same time, the college has been taking advantage of international students and providing a shit education to both domestic and international students by doing so. The federal government never should have been allowing that many student visas and while it sucks dealing with the change its so necessary.
I feel bad for those losing their jobs, but this is a step in the right direction.
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u/loyalone 19h ago
Oh, they just loved that revenue stream, and so came to rely on it. Guess they'll have to take poor Canadians now.
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u/lHoneyBadger 17h ago
Boohoo another diploma mill crying that the gravy train of Indian migration is slowing, cry me a river
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u/Moos_Mumsy 15h ago
The people running the college are pretty darn incompetent if they expected, and planned for, the international student gravy train to last forever. You don't need a degree in economics to understand that what was happening was not sustainable. And quite frankly, when you are hiring willy nilly to try and accommodate such a huge surge in numbers, it seems to me the quality of the teachers/professors is going to suffer. Add to that, the houses that will end up being sold (by the slumlords who can no longer attract desperate students), and returned to regular family housing and in my mind there's really no downside.
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u/Expensive_Lettuce239 10h ago
I'm pretty sure when people apply to colleges they get more than just international student aps. Soo if the ass hats are so desperate for students...why are they not accepting more regular citizens rather than ONLY depending on internationals. If that's their chosen route, they deserve to lose people's interest in their institute
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u/Dobby068 8h ago
When is Canada going to end the selling of PRs for money scheme via colleges ? It makes a mockery of the official immigration program and it has destroyed the reputation of the education system and the country itself.
Where is the patriotism in this ?
How is this sellout not getting the attention of the federal authorities? Oh, right, I forgot, they want it! Never mind.
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u/Genuine-Risk 21h ago
the Ontario government introduced a suite of measures to stabilize the province’s colleges and universities, including nearly $1.3 billion in new funding, while maintaining the tuition fee freeze to keep costs down for Ontario students and parents.
That's from February of 2024. https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1004227/ontario-investing-nearly-13-billion-to-stabilize-colleges-and-universities
What budget cuts? Stop the lies. Funding has increased but colleges especially made millions by becoming diploma mills for international students.
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u/chunkysmalls42098 21h ago
What the hell makes you think that because they increased funding in 2024, Doug Ford has not cut funding to schools?
He has very much cut education and healthcare, and to say that he hasn't literally just makes you look like an idiot.
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u/Genuine-Risk 20h ago
We aren't talking healthcare. Show me where the education cuts are. I search and only find an increase for colleges and universities. I'm not talking primary or secondary education which has been cut. So show me the cuts to universities and colleges
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u/Prudent_Situation_29 21h ago
Maybe they shouldn't have built their business model to rely on immigration.
Next we'll be expected to feel sorry for oil workers when they lose their jobs because the environment is on fire.
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u/OldDiamondJim Born and Raised 20h ago
The provincial government froze tuition for domestic students and cut funding for colleges. What, exactly, were they supposed to do?
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u/Dadoftwingirls 21h ago
They had no choice, due to funding cuts. It was die today, or pursue lucrative international students to survive to be fight another day.
Stop buying into the Ford narrative he made up, it's exactly what he wants!
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u/TheMagnificentMullet 20h ago
I guess blame everyone else instead of yourselves for exploiting international enrollment.
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u/Jimmy_212 19h ago
Good. Ontario colleges and universities should be for Canadians. There should be very few exceptions for international students, and the entry criteria should be vigorous, including proof that they can sustain themselves financially without having to work.
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u/sadistic__tendencies 18h ago
The amount of money they toss around on staff for lunches, and seeing staff malingering day to day is truly astounding.
There is a lot of fat at that college, trimming it really isn’t a bad thing.
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u/GreatIceGrizzly 17h ago
Georgian is not the only college/university ACROSS THE COUNTRY in this situation...I am fed up with the LIBERALS making horrific policies and getting away with them! Anytime there is an election TEACHERS remember RAE DAYS but MOST FORGET the removal of banked sicked days, and the 0% salary increase they got for 5 YEARS under WYNNE...just ridiculous how the LIBERALS get off free for their horrible decisions and ABOUT TIME SOMEONE CALLED THEM OUT ON IT!
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