By: Lucaiah Smith-Miodownik, News Writer
On June 17, SFU president Joy Johnson announced that more layoffs are likely in the university’s future, largely attributing these cuts to the Canadian government’s cap on international students. This news comes after the university already laid off close to 100 staff last summer — a tally that has only grown since. “Just this week [of June 23] alone, five APSA members have lost their jobs,” Ben Boyle, Administrative and Professional Staff Association (APSA) president, told The Peak.
The Peak also corresponded with SFU and Migrant Students United Vancouver (MSUV) to learn more about how these government policies will affect SFU and the broader national landscape.
2024 saw a 35% reduction in study permits allocated nationally. This national policy “contributed to an operating budget shortfall of $18 million for [SFU’s] 2025–2026 budget,” SFU stated. “Approximately 85% of that deficit was linked to a drop in international students.”
Despite help from a $22 million fossil fuel divestment gain, the past year also involved “budget cuts for administrative units” and an ongoing staff hiring freeze for the school. These trends may continue, SFU said, as the university considers “not backfilling staff vacancies or potential layoffs.”
International Student Dependancy
“It is disappointing that our members learnt about the likelihood of further layoffs not directly from the SFU president, but through a media interview,” Boyle said.
“While we acknowledge that abrupt shifts in government policy have made it more difficult to recruit from abroad, there also has to be accountability from the university for their longstanding overreliance on, and commodification of, international students as a primary revenue source,” Boyle said.
“We are calling on the university to implement a layoff freeze — or, at the very least, establish a firm deadline by which units must make such decisions — in order to provide much-needed respite for staff.” — Ben Boyle, Administrative & Professional Staff Association president
MSUV, an organization that advocates for migrant students’ rights “at the university, provincial, and national level,” expressed a similar sentiment, asserting that “universities across Canada, like SFU, have grown dependent on international students as cash cows.
“This landscape was made possible by irresponsible leadership relying too heavily on international students rather than continuing to push for increased public funding for post-secondary education, something student unions and faculty associations have been demanding for decades,” the organization said. “As spending on police and military budgets went up, funding for education went down, creating a dependency on increased tuition rates that even domestic students can’t keep up with.” In 2020, the average debt owed upon graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Canada was $30,600.
Boyle echoed these statements, saying, “This has created a vicious cycle of financial dependency and institutional vulnerability — one that we’re now seeing play out across the sector.”
Last year, CBC linked to a report which noted that “students from India alone will provide Ontario colleges with $2 billion in operating revenue for the 2023–2024 school year.” They noted, “That’s slightly more than those colleges receive from the provincial government.” The article also said “the surge in international students has coincided with reports of some recruiters misleading those students about the education they’ll receive and the real cost of living in Canada.”
Calls to Action
In her recent interview with CBC, Johnson recognized SFU has “not been able to balance our budget and have relied on international students to make up that shortfall.” The Peak reached out for an interview, but she was unavailable before the publication deadline.
“Whilst it may be convenient for the university to attribute layoffs fundamentally on the international student cap, broader strategic decisions must also be scrutinized,” Boyle said. “APSA has yet to receive an explanation for why the draft SFU Academic Plan 2025–2030 includes a commitment to increase continuing faculty numbers by 5% over the next five years — despite projected declines in both domestic and international enrolment,” he added.
“Migrants are not the problem. We have more in common with each other as working-class people than you do with billionaires and corporations. Don’t let them divide and distract us.” — Migrant Students United Vancouver
“We are calling on the university to implement a layoff freeze — or, at the very least, establish a firm deadline by which units must make such decisions — in order to provide much-needed respite for staff.”
For MSUV, Canada’s revised immigration policy extends beyond its post-secondary implications. “This cap signals to us the long-standing xenophobic narrative, similar to ‘immigrants are stealing our jobs,’ that migrants are the cause of unaffordability that intensifies in times of economic crisis.
“Migrants have always been the most convenient group of people for the government to put a target on our backs to deflect from their failure to enact policies that put people over corporate profits,” they expressed.
“Canadians need to think more critically about the xenophobic narrative that is being sold to them. Migrants are not the problem. We have more in common with each other as working-class people than you do with billionaires and corporations. Don’t let them divide and distract us. Money for jobs and education, not war and police.”
