Fanshawe College slashes workforce by 35% as international student enrolment plummets

Fanshawe College has cut 35 per cent of its jobs due to budget issues it said is due to less international students enrolling. CTV London’s Daryl Newbombe has m

Employees of Fanshawe College face deep across-the-board job cuts following a significant decline in enrollment for the next school year.

On Thursday, the college announced its workforce will be slashed by 35 per cent in the coming weeks—about 400 full-time positions—to partially address a massive budget shortfall in 2025/26.

“Initially shock,” admitted Adam Rayfield, president of OPSEU/SEFPO Local 109 that represents full-time and part-time support staff. “While we knew that [job losses] were coming, the numbers shared today were perhaps greater than most folks anticipated.”

To lessen the blow, about 100 vacant positions will not be filled at the school and about 70 employees have accepted early retirements.

Rayfield is awaiting official notification from the college to begin the seniority-based process spelled out in their collective agreement.

“You shift to anxiety and fear of what it means next,” he said about the reaction from his membership. “And because there’s not absolute certainty on timelines, that becomes more difficult to navigate.”

The most recent projections suggest Fanshawe College was facing a $38.6 million shortfall in its 2025/26 budget.

CTV News was told no one from Fanshawe’s leadership team was available for an interview on Thursday following a townhall meeting between President Peter Devlin and a couple hundred employees.

However, the financial crisis faced by the school suggests an overreliance on international students who pay tuitions that are much higher than domestic students.

Enrollment of international students will drop by 63 per cent in the next school year, and overall enrollment by 30 per cent primarily because of a federal cap on international students.

In the video of the townhall meeting, Devlin explained, “Things are evolving. And I’m confident that we are moving in the right direction together. And I want to also say that at the end of it, just this, there would still be a funding gap. And so there is a need for provincial action.”

He added that Ontario’s colleges have made a collective pitch for a modernized funding model—but acknowledged its unlikely to be included in the upcoming provincial budget.

Rayfield said the union has been taking steps to prepare its members for the difficult process ahead, “We’ve been offering daily drop-in sessions and seminars on what that layoff language looks like. So, we were prepared. The particulars today sends that home, quite frankly, and make it very real.”

Devlin anticipates the new college structure will take effect on June 30.

A written statement by Dave Schwartz, Fanshawe College’s executive manager, Reputation and Brand Management reads: