B.C. colleges feeling the pinch after feds slash international student visas

Colleges successful British Columbia are facing the imaginable of layoffs and a simplification successful pupil services arsenic they grapple with the effects of the national government’s clampdown connected planetary students.

Citing interest astir pupil exploitation and unit connected rental lodging markets, Ottawa has slashed planetary pupil visas by 45 per cent this year.

Foreign students wage 4 to 5 times much than Canadians to survey astatine B.C. post-secondary education, and the nonaccomplishment of that gross is present being felt.

“Our institutions person really seen much than a 50-per cent driblet successful planetary pupil enrollment, truthful this has been a melodramatic overnight chopped successful an important root of enrolment and gross for colleges,” said Michael Conlon, enforcement manager of the Federation of Post Secondary Educators.

“For the play of the past 10 years oregon so, some the national and provincial authorities person encouraged, and successful information successful immoderate cases funded colleges and universities to pursuit planetary students astir the satellite to travel to Canada and study, it was a programme they were arrogant of, and present the governmental winds person shifted, and we present fundamentally spot adjacent to a shutdown.

Conlon said Vancouver’s Langara College has already seen much than 100 jobs cut, and that unit astatine different B.C. colleges person been called into meetings and warned astir apt occupation and programme cuts.

Camosun College connected Vancouver Island is besides feeling the pinch. The schoolhouse volition spot 400 less planetary students than budgeted this year, and is facing a projected $5 cardinal shortage adjacent year.

In a statement, the assemblage said it has “been forced to marque the hard determination of eliminating vacant positions and layoffs crossed each worker groups.”

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Comusn College Faculty Association president Lynelle Yutani said the cuts volition wounded students and staff.

“We are talking astir large restructuring decisions, making decisions that tin impact people’s lives, livelihood, and surely person the aforesaid benignant of effects connected our students,” she said.

“They are instructors who person been moving for the assemblage successful galore cases for years, sometimes decades, and teaching the sections of courses that students request successful bid to progress.”

Yutani said the situation highlights years of underfunding to the province’s post-secondary institutions, who person been near reliant connected planetary students to capable the gaps successful their budgets.

She said schools successful B.C. volition beryllium intimately watching who B.C. Premier David Eby chooses arsenic curate of post-secondary institutions adjacent week, and volition beryllium pressuring them for help.