By: Hannah Fraser, News Editor
As SFU nears the end of its five-year contract with UniForum — a consulting program used during a period of financial strain — some community members are questioning how the program’s findings may have informed the university’s financial decisions.
UniForum is operated by Nous Group, an international management consultancy firm, and is marketed as a benchmarking program that allows universities to compare their administrative services with those of other institutions. Since 2019, Nous has expanded its work across Canadian universities in the face of rising costs, stagnant government funding, and growing uncertainty around international student revenues.
At SFU, the program involves an annual survey and data collection to assess how time and resources are allocated across areas like human resources, facilities, and finance. While the university emphasizes that UniForum’s primary purpose is benchmarking, the Administrative and Professional Staff Association (APSA) has continued to raise questions about the program in light of its impact on staff.
A trail of questions
In 2022, APSA published an update about UniForum, stating they were “carefully observing UniForum’s engagement by SFU and asking questions of the university’s senior administration.”
APSA noted to administrative staff that, “The UniForum model categorizes administrative jobs held by both professional and academic staff into activities. It then looks at ways to improve the “performance” of these activities by putting all of these activities into one position.” They also explained to staff that their “overtime or tasks outside [their] job scope are not added or used” when data about their position is categorized. The association deemed this a “critical issue” in terms of how data is input and represented, and said they would continue researching the program to update staff.
The Peak reached out to Andrew Boden, executive director at APSA, for further insight. Boden said that SFU’s lack of transparency regarding the UniForum process made it difficult to draw definitive conclusions. He said that, around fall 2023, APSA received “some thoughts from the senior administration” about the program, but “by no means was it anything like a fulsome report or what we would call a transparent process.”
In 2024, further discussion with administration suggested that UniForum was being used “as a tool to guide certain position layoffs.” Nearly 100 staff were laid off at SFU that summer, including positions in Student Services. Boden emphasized that the program was likely “only one factor” in those decisions and said he remains uncertain about “how much of a tool it was.” He also said that while staff had shared concerns about the program, he could not relay specific comments due to confidentiality.
Given the layoffs, questions remain about whether UniForum functioned solely as a benchmarking program. In a statement to The Peak, SFU said, “the ongoing staff hiring freeze and layoffs in 2024 were entirely in response SFU’s budget challenges, with changes in government policy on international students that negatively impacted enrolment.”
Inside questions about data and costs
SFU staff were also directly involved with the UniForum program, helping with data collection. One worker, Parker, was asked to confirm data collected by management and reached out to The Peak with concerns about the program. Parker’s name has been changed to protect their identity.
In line with APSA’s observations, Parker said there were issues with how employees were classified in the surveys. For instance, the system was unable to “fully break down a subject’s job” or capture “how an employee spends their time.” They added that UniForum’s surveys do not account for the nuance in which some administrative roles “would require more financial management than others — especially ones relying on grants and funds requiring reporting to external funders.” By oversimplifying roles in the surveys, Parker was concerned that the data would misrepresent how resources are actually used across the university.
Parker also noted that SFU’s Statements of Financial Information (SOFI) likely understated the full amount spent on the UniForum program. According to the reports, the amounts were $340,200 in 2021, $299,732 in 2023, $311,757 in 2024, and $330,378 in 2025 (under “Cubane”). Nous Group acquired Cubane Consulting and its UniForum program in 2021. SFU’s 2020 and 2022 SOFI reports do not explicitly include the Cubane costs.
Parker emphasized that these figures “will not account for the time spent on this project.” They estimated that, when combining staff salaries with the fees paid to Nous, “the true cost of the Nous contract would likely be over $2 million. Laying off the 50 CUPE members [would] almost be equivalent to that cost.
“I strongly feel that the university is misspending money. And that’s what opens my eyes is how much they’re spending on middle managers, consultants, travel, [and] mortgage subsidies for executives. Instead of cutting perks and cushy salaries, they [would] rather sacrifice essential clerical staff.”
— Parker, SFU staff member involved with UniForum’s data collection
“There’s lots of areas of weakness in our financial processes if they don’t dedicate labour for internal controls,” they added, referring to the recent lawsuit in which SFU sued their former School of Contemporary Arts administrative manager for allegedly misappropriating almost $200,000 for five years. “These things happen all the time. I’ve seen how things can easily slip through the cracks and be ignored,” said Parker.
Boden echoed some of these concerns, noting that he believes the SOFI figures only reflect staff salaries. APSA requested that SFU provide the full cost of the UniForum program, but never received a response.
Defence and doubt
The broader UniForum program has faced criticism from faculty across Canada who argue that Nous promotes a corporate approach to addressing university budget challenges. By encouraging universities to focus on efficiency metrics and centralization, these critics say the consulting results justify staff and program cuts. They also argue that attention is diverted from the deeper structural issues, such as government underfunding.
Some faculty have even coined the term “Nousferatu” — after the classic vampire Nosferatu — to describe the perceived dynamic in which corporate consultants are “extracting the lifeblood” from universities.
Tim Kennedy, head of Nous Group Canada, has rejected these characterizations. He told National Post that the firm’s approach is “not a race to the bottom. It’s what can you do with increasingly less budget.” He emphasized that UniForum does not direct specific cuts, but provides leaders with the tools to make informed decisions in an “institutionally led” renewal.
With hopes that UniForum could support SFU, the university told The Peak that, “Around five years ago, the Board and the senior leaders expressed interest in examining the university’s administrative services and how that compares with other institutions.” At that time, “research indicated that the UniForum was the most effective tool available, which was tailored to view university administrative work at a functional level to support making comparisons.”
SFU stated they were “aware of some criticism of the UniForum program, and how direct comparison can be nuanced, however, the program has provided data into administrative roles and functions across the university.”
When asked about what the SOFI figures reflected and the cost of the program as a whole, SFU stated, “As UniForum has a five-year contract with SFU, the figures for 2020 and 2022 would be in-line with the figures you provided as they are the Cubane/UniForum contract costs.”
Despite these statements, some questions remain. “We remain very much concerned [with] how UniForum was used by the university,” Boden said. “The outstanding question for me is what was the return on investment — how much did it cost versus how much did you get out of it? And is that return on investment justifiable?”
As well, “if the UniForum process was flawed and the university relied on it, what does that mean for resourcing at the university and for staff?”
SFU stated that “the current contract with UniForum ends Mar. 31, 2026. As the university continues to take a critical approach to spending, a decision has yet to be made on whether the program will continue.”