Ontario colleges pulled in more money from foreign student tuition than from provincial taxpayers last year, making the province the only jurisdiction in Canada where fees outpaced public funding, Statistics Canada said in a new report.The study, Colleges Report Their Largest Recorded Growth In Revenue In More Than Two Decades, found 64.5% of college revenue in Ontario came from tuition fees. Blacklock's Reporter says no other province or territory came close, with the rest relying primarily on public funding.Nationally, college revenue jumped 11.5% to $18.5 billion in 2023-24, with 77% of that growth driven by student fees. Analysts said the surge was fuelled largely by foreign students, who in many cases pay up to four times the tuition charged to Canadians.Foreign study permits peaked in 2023 at more than one million students nationwide, with most of that growth centred in Ontario..Immigration data showed Conestoga College topped the country with 40,565 international students in 2023, followed by the University of Toronto (31,380), Seneca College (23,530), University of Canada West in Vancouver (22,375), the University of British Columbia (20,415) and Centennial College (20,370).Despite the revenue windfall, college presidents denied at parliamentary hearings that the massive inflows were motivated by profit. Conestoga president John Tibbits, who earns $640,000 a year, told MPs on October 9 that foreign recruitment “was not about money.”“There was no money to be made,” said Tibbits. “We didn’t try to make money. We were just trying to fill shortages.” Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner challenged that claim, noting Conestoga’s operating surplus exploded from $3 million in 2015 to $252 million in 2024..Asked whether foreign student permits should have been tied to housing availability and cost, Tibbits said: “We were encouraged to grow.”Seneca College president David Agnew, who earns $450,000 a year, testified that his school’s international enrollment dropped from 81,000 to under 15,000 in two years. Agnew rejected the idea that Ottawa implied permit levels would be permanent.“Did the federal government give you the impression that the level of permits you were receiving would go on indefinitely?” asked MP Rempel Garner. “No,” replied Agnew.“Why did you persist?”“Nothing lasts forever,” he said.
