Following its exploitation of Indian students, suddenly cash-strapped Algoma University’s future in Brampton is murky

Three years ago, Algoma University’s leaders trumpeted the school’s unprecedented overnight success in Brampton.

They didn’t tell anyone it was little more than smoke and mirrors. 

Now, the suddenly cash-strapped school is back where it was a decade ago.

The woman hired to lead the beleaguered university out of its financial mess, now-former president Asima Vezina, told Brampton officials in 2022 that the school’s already dubious growth in the city would dramatically “accelerate”.   

The post-secondary institution, based 700 kilometres away in Sault Ste. Marie, had just welcomed 3,000 students to its booming downtown Brampton satellite campus—a more than 1,000 percent increase from 2018—and major plans were in the offing to expand Algoma’s footprint in the ailing city centre. 

Vezina told Brampton officials every municipal dollar, contributed by the city’s property tax payers, would see 12 dollars returned on the investment. A university that was drowning in debt when Vezina took over as its president in 2017, was suddenly swimming in cash.

As detailed in its own financial disclosures, Algoma went from $5,806,372 in total cash assets in 2016 (when, according to Ontario’s Auditor General, the university was over-burdened by debt) to $227,985,000 in 2023, a 3,800 percent increase in seven years.

By 2024, thanks to students from India, mostly Punjab, the university was deep into its reckless strategy of admitting masses of international applicants at its Brampton satellite campus, whose enrolment had far exceeded the main campus in Sault Ste. Marie which has about 2,000 students. The Brampton site was bursting at the seams, as the student body exploded, from approximately 540 who attended in the 2020/21 academic year, to 5,372 in 2024—a nearly 900 percent increase in three years.

The overseas students paid more than three times the fees charged to domestic students, and were viewed by Algoma as a cash cow, the answer to the financial turmoil laid out by the province’s Auditor General in its scathing 2022 investigation report. 

“They are ripping us off as much [as] they can,” Simranjit Singh, who was studying Human Resources and Business Management last year at Algoma’s Brampton campus, told The Pointer. “I was expecting for [a] good academic future here, but eventually Canada failed me.”

In its 2022 report, Ontario’s Auditor General warned that the university’s irresponsible financial strategy was not sustainable: “Algoma has become economically dependent on international student tuition revenue from students from India”.

Appearing before Brampton council on September 12, 2022, two months before the release of the auditor’s troubling report, Vezina made the bold proclamation that the Brampton campus would reach 5,000 students over the next three years, despite what the Auditor General described as a glaring lack of investment in the campus to support the flood of foreign students. 

The unsustainable student expansion at the Brampton campus was achieved without “significant capital investments”, the Auditor General warned in 2022. 

Last year, with almost 5,400 students in Brampton, the small satellite campus had only 16 classrooms.

As attention on international student exploitation across the country grew, things started to unravel for Algoma.

Last year the Algoma University Faculty Association (AUFA) voted in favour of a “no confidence motion” against Vezina. 

"Since Vezina took over as president in 2017, she has made unilateral and significant changes for the university that prioritize intensive profit-making and privatization over students’ interests, leading to the deterioration of quality education, the erosion of the student experience, and the severe damage to Algoma’s reputation,” a stinging press release from AUFA last year alleged.

As international student enrolment fell off a cliff, partly due to severe cuts imposed by Ottawa and also as a result of the widespread stories about the conditions foreign students in Brampton had to endure, the school’s finances have been devastated. 

Algoma is projecting its enrolment will be down 50 percent by the end of the current academic year and its operating revenue will crater, from $264.6 million last year to $123.5 million in 2025/26, a loss of more than half the money it brought in just a year ago.

With the finances in tatters and the faculty union demanding her dismissal over the reckless, doomed strategy, Vezina quietly announced in February that she was stepping down effective immediately, despite two years remaining on her contract.

The woman who had promised so much for Brampton was suddenly gone, leaving a trail of questions behind her. 

A $7.3 million investment approved by Mayor Patrick Brown and his council colleagues had already helped Algoma expand into other buildings around downtown, including 8 Queen Street East in Garden Square in 2020 and 52 Queen Street East in 2021. Algoma also has campus buildings located at 24 Queen Street East, 56 Queen Street East, its administrative building at 28 Main Street and a location in Mississauga known as its Creekbank campus.

Before all the cracks began to show, Vezina told councillors Algoma was “desperate” for more space and was back before council again two years ago, this time with even bolder figures, claiming the university needed an additional 265,000 square feet in the downtown to accommodate its skyrocketing international student enrolment, projected to reach 7,500 in the coming years. 

Two years later, she is no longer with the institution; the ambitious student numbers have fallen apart; future expansion plans, including a 500-bed downtown residence, appear to be on pause or cancelled and concerns are being raised about the university’s future in the city.

Algoma recently announced program pauses and significant drops in revenue—mainly due to Algoma’s over-reliance on international student enrolments which have been capped following intervention by the federal government.

Students at Algoma’s Brampton Campus told The Pointer they spent as much as $26,000 a year on tuition and other fees alone, despite there being no student housing in Brampton, no library, no university recreation or athletic facilities and no meal plans.

As previously reported by The Pointer, students from India made up approximately 92 percent of Algoma’s 5,400 Brampton students last year.

With the sudden, severe decline in those numbers, the university is projecting a razor-thin $1 million surplus this budget year, compared to the hundreds of millions in cash on hand enjoyed over the past few years. 

“The financial landscape facing Ontario universities has shifted dramatically,” a press release from Algoma warned, noting this year’s budget “differs significantly from those of previous years” pointing to provincial underfunding, tuition freezes, operational costs and the federal changes to international student permits as “placing unprecedented pressure on our finances”. 

“We must be realistic, significantly declining revenues—due largely to a more than 50 percent decrease in our student population—mean the University must make prudent decisions and consider all options to protect our future and continue serving our students with integrity and care,” Dr. Donna Rogers, who was Algoma University’s interim president and vice-chancellor, admitted in a May 1st press release. (She has since been replaced by current Interim President and Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Sheila Embleton, the third person to hold the role this year.)  

The same month, Algoma’s board approved an enrolment pause in five programs: geography, history, sociology, music and visual arts for one year starting in April. It’s a decision that was made without consulting faculty, and could have sweeping implications for students in Brampton. 

Alice Ridout, Department Chair of English and History at Algoma and the Vice President of OPSEU Local 685, the Algoma University Faculty Association, said she was deeply disappointed that the Board has dug in its heels and refuses to consider reversing the damaging decision.  

52 Queen Street East

24 Queen Street East

Algoma University currently leases several buildings across downtown Brampton.

(Muhammad Hamza/The Pointer)

She said the new administration, led by Dr. Embleton and Brett Goodwin, VP of academics and research, has been holding meetings with faculty in the five programs, which is a time-consuming process as "both are new to their positions." 

Although Embleton confirmed that recruitment is fully underway for all five paused programs for fall 2026 during the Algoma University Senate meeting on Friday, September 12, which Ridout said "is wonderful news", there is still a lack of transparency about the resources that will be directed to relaunching these programs.

"What has not yet been made clear enough is what special supports will be provided to these five programs to help them recover from the damaging pause to their intake this year," Ridout told The Pointer. "Meetings are scheduled over the next few weeks to address these outstanding questions and concerns."

According to a post on Algoma’s website announcing the program changes, the decision was made to pause these “low enrolment programs”  to ensure the “long-term sustainability of its academic offerings” and done as a direct response to value for money audits by Ontario’s auditor general, first in 2022, and then last year.

In 2022, the AG recommended Algoma analyze the financial contribution of each academic program, address those operating at a loss and implement changes to ensure long-term financial viability. The follow-up review concluded that Algoma had made “little to no progress” and revealed 20 percent (seven of 32) of the university’s academic programs were unprofitable, including Music, Visual Arts, and Anishinaabemowin.

 Billboards and signs across the Indian state of Punjab, where the vast majority of Brampton’s immigration has come from over the past two decades, promote the Canadian dream to young people. 

(Facebook)

Ridout told The Pointer that the university administration misrepresented the enrolment in these programs by only factoring in students majoring in these programs, and not those taking them as electives—which includes many on the Brampton campus. When the decision was made in the spring, many students had yet to accept their offers of admission for the fall, further skewing the numbers, she said. 

“If we don't return to using metrics that include our Brampton students in assessing the financial contributions of these five programs, courses from these five programs will become far less available to students in Brampton. That would negatively affect the academic experience of all our Brampton students. This is the only way to properly account for our students in Brampton who need courses from these five programs to complete a well-rounded undergraduate degree.

"If the contributions of these five programs to our Brampton campus are not recognized because none of those students are majoring in these programs, we will see a severe shortage of electives for students taking the degree programs that are available in Brampton in the future. The university experience of all Brampton students will then be seriously negatively affected."

Paulette Steeves, the faculty chair of cross-cultural studies and a professor of geography, geology and land stewardship, also said the financial sustainability of these programs, and their real impact on Algoma’s budget, were not accurately presented. She says the eliminated courses were generating sufficient revenue for the institution, and said the decision would sideline Indigenous voices.

“Both programs (Geography and Sociology) were financially stable,” she wrote in a written response to The Pointer. "The board made its decision without consulting the impacted departments or faculty members, and the board may not have had the correct information regarding the viability of these programs. AU's broader mission is to honor Shingwauk's vision and be an educational facility serving northern Ontario. The decision made by the board to close first-year entry into these programs would be devastating for Algoma's broader mission and for students."

The Pointer contacted Mohamed El Kahlout, Algoma University’s media relations manager and Dr. Embleton; neither responded.

Speaking with students at Algoma’s Brampton campus, many said they had no information on the suspension of programs. One student, who asked that his name be kept private, said that last year, after arriving from India, he was told by Algoma administration that his program was cancelled, which forced him to seek admission in a different course, which was not his intended field of study prior to arriving in Canada.

City of Brampton officials including Mayor Brown have often touted Algoma’s success in the city and claimed its planned expansion was a focus of the downtown “innovation corridor” plan, which has failed to materialize.

But there is radio silence on the state of Algoma’s plan. 

Last year, Brown and other officials including Vezina, unveiled a plan for a new student residence with space for between 500 and 600 beds, located at Park Street and Nelson Street West. Properties at the intersection show no signs of construction. A nearby site adjacent to an existing condo development is fenced off, but it’s unclear if this is the future site for the student residence.

City of Brampton officials and Algoma University officials did not respond to questions for this article. 

A fenced off area near Park Street and Nelson Street West. It’s unclear if this is the site for a future 500 to 600-bed student residence proposed by Algoma University.

(Muhammad Hamza/The Pointer)

A detailed accounting of the investment into Algoma by Brampton taxpayers has never been made public. In 2019, the City of Brampton agreed to dedicate $7.3 million in financial assistance to Algoma University to assist its $34.4 million campus expansion project over the period of three years to double the student capacity. Algoma has not provided information about the state of this investment, whether all this money was spent or if elements of the plan remain incomplete. 

GARDEN SQUARE

SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

Several parts of Brampton’s expansion plan in the city’s downtown have come to fruition when comparing renderings from 2019 and those same sites today. With the cap on international students and the impact of the lost revenue, the future of these locations, which Algoma leases in the downtown, are uncertain.

(Renderings: Algoma University/ Photos Muhammad Hamza/The Pointer)

Algoma officials were asked about the current state of the overall Brampton expansion plan and the impact of the drastic revenue loss.

If the cap on international students remains in place beyond the initial two years, it could have dire implications. 

The changes were first introduced in the 2025-2027 Immigration Levels Plan by former immigration minister Marc Miller, unveiled in October last year, to “pause population growth” in the short term, to ease pressure on housing, infrastructure and public services, while setting a foundation for long-term stability. The targets reduced the number of permanent residency permits from a planned 500,000 to 395,000 this year, with a further reduction to 365,000 by 2027. Canada’s non-permanent resident population, including international students, is expected to decline by nearly 900,000 over the next two years due to capped permits and tighter eligibility criteria. Prime Minister Mark Carney has not revealed his own detailed plan yet. 

The temporary resident population, which includes international students, reached more than 3 million people at the start of this year. In 2023, the number of permanent resident immigrants and non-permanent residents was just over 1.2 million, as overall population growth in the country reached 3.2 percent, the highest rate since 1957, when it was 3.3 percent. 

Ottawa cracked down on dozens of colleges and universities, such as Algoma, that had abused the system. In 2023, 543,978 international student permits were authorized or confirmed (233,272 from India alone). This year, the total number of international students slated to arrive is 305,900, the same target for 2026 and 2027, a 44 percent reduction each year compared to 2023 levels.

With the drastic change in government policy, post-secondary institutions that had exploited international students are now scrambling to address huge revenue losses.

The Council of Ontario Universities revealed in October 2024 that, as a result of federal changes, Ontario universities are projecting financial losses of more than $300 million in 2024-25, compared to 2023, doubling to more than $600 million in 2026—marking a nearly $1 billion loss of revenue in the first two years of the new plan. The loss in revenue has led to layoffs, hiring freezes, and service reductions inside Canadian colleges and universities, including across Peel, where Sheridan College has campuses in Brampton and Mississauga. It was forced to suspend 40 educational programs, put another 27 under review, and lay off staff, projecting a 30 percent decline in enrolment and a $112 million drop in revenue in 2024 alone due to the loss of international students. 

With much more severe losses for Algoma, it’s unclear how its revolving-door leadership will navigate the university’s future in Brampton.

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