‘We have not been informed’: Faculty Association left in the dark as Algoma plans to layoff up to 75 staff

The cracks in Algoma University’s crumbling hyper-growth strategy are more visible than ever. After years of relying entirely on foreign students who injected hundreds of millions of dollars into the post-secondary institution, it’s leaders announced plans to slash 50 to 75 staff.

The decision was made as Algoma faces a $5.5 million to $7 million deficit after losing huge revenues from international students whose numbers on Brampton’s satellite campus have plummeted. The administration projects 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.

One of the downtown Brampton buildings where Algoma University leases space for its academic programs.

(Muhmmad Hamza/The Pointer)

In an email to The Pointer this week, Alice Ridout, vice president of OPSEU Local 685, which represents Algoma faculty members, confirmed the union has not been given any indication by the administration of which departments will be impacted by the layoffs or who will be let go.

“OPSEU Local 685 has not yet been notified about whether or how the layoffs will affect our members,” Ridout said.

After Algoma’s interim president, Dr. Sheila Embleton, gave statements last week about the looming layoff of 50 to 75 staff, Ridout pointed out that between 2020 and 2024, while enrolment ballooned from 1,500 to 9,000 students, during the same period, the number of full-time faculty only increased from 62 to 90 employees.

It was the latest information that illustrates what the provincial auditor warned of in 2022, when an investigation into Algoma’s mismanagement found its hyper-growth was unsustainable and had not been matched by proper investments to support the huge waves of new students. 

"Given the massive increase in our student numbers, this growth of 28 full-time faculty members is modest," Ridout said, underscoring that even with a loss of half its students, Algoma still does not have enough faculty to adequately support those who are left.

"Even with this year's sudden decline in international students, the university is still anticipating a final enrollment of 4,482 FTEs. This is approximately three times the number of students that we had in 2020, but we have nowhere near three times the number of full-time faculty."

She said that part-time faculty, who made up 70 percent of Algoma’s professors' association, have already experienced job losses, with numerous contracts cancelled this year.

"Many part-time faculty will find themselves this fall without the teaching contracts they have received over the past three or four years." 

She highlighted the broad challenges post-secondary teaching professionals now face.

"This is particularly concerning and challenging because the opportunities for teaching contracts are greatly reduced right across the post-secondary education sector."

She said it’s hard to assess the looming impact of the coming job losses on the university and students until the full details are known.

Ridout pointed out the concerns the union raised two years ago. Academic department chairs wrote a letter to then-president Asima Vezina and former board chair Mike Moraca in September of 2023, cautioning that the rapid growth of international students was unsustainable, but Ridout said the warning was ignored, which ultimately triggered the faculty to bring forward a vote of “no-confidence” against Vezina.

A blistering press release was issued by the union last year, after the no-confidence vote, which called for the dismissal of Vezina, who oversaw the strategy to dramatically boost revenue after Algoma had been saddled by debt due to its own mismanagement.

"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,” the press release from AUFA alleged.

The timing of the coming layoffs comes after other institutions had already prepared for losses when Ottawa announced dramatic cuts to international student numbers long before the start of the academic year. 

Institutions such as Sheridan College, which in November last year announced the suspension of 40 programs and conducted a review of an additional 27 programs, began preparing immediately after Ottawa warned of drastic reductions. Algoma, meanwhile, claimed it would not be severely impacted and that it was not a focus of the federal government’s crackdown on bad actors.

This was despite the 2022 report by Ontario’s Auditor General which 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.”

The AG report detailed how under Vezina’s leadership a reckless, profit-driven strategy was pursued by Algoma, despite it being unmanageable: “Current compensation practices for international recruiting agents incentivize them to recruit more students, but not necessarily more qualified students,” the AG report pointed out. “Agents are compensated based on a percentage of the base tuition. The university also paid in-country recruiting services a fixed monthly fee plus expenses incurred. This compensation structure may incentivize recruiting agents to recruit a large number of students who may not ultimately become successful graduates because the students are meeting only minimum admission requirements”.

The Auditor General “found instances where an international student applicant was accepted to the university even though their transcript did not meet admission requirements.” Eight percent of its sample for Algoma found the university “granted admission to students who did not have the required prerequisites for their program of study.”

When Algoma and other institutions were exposed for their exploitation of international students, the federal immigration ministry came down hard. 

“Some institutions have significantly increased their intakes to drive revenues, and more students have been arriving in Canada without the proper supports they need to succeed,” a ministry press release acknowledged last year. “Rapid increases in the number of international students arriving in Canada also puts pressure on housing, health care and other services.”

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

Now, Vezina, the woman who oversaw the unchecked student expansion, is no longer with the institution, after she quietly stepped down in February with two years left on her contract. The ambitious student numbers have fallen apart; future expansion plans, including a 500 to 600-bed downtown residence in Brampton, appear to be on pause or cancelled, and concerns are being raised about the university’s future in the city.

“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’s interim president at the time, admitted in a May 1st press release. (She has since been replaced by 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. 

Faculty told The Pointer that many of these programs are financially stable and essential for Brampton students.

"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," Paulette Steeves, the faculty chair of cross-cultural studies and a professor of geography, geology, and land stewardship, said.

A fenced-off area near Park Street and Nelson Street West in downtown Brampton. This is supposed to be where a future 500 to 600-bed student residence proposed by Algoma University was set to be built.

(Muhammad Hamza/The Pointer)

Algoma’s sudden financial shock comes alongside recent federal changes to international student permits, which 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 new 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. 

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 Pointer sent questions to Mohamed El Kahlout, Algoma University’s media relations manager, and Dr. Embleton, the Interim President, regarding the university's finances, the announced layoffs of up to 75 staff and what is being planned in Brampton to deal with the huge loss of revenue. Neither responded ahead of publication.

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