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Premier Doug Ford's Ontario

My two teens are starting university this Sept. From the in-person (pre-shutdown) fairs and campus tours we attended in 2019 and early 2020 I’d say the lack of international students is really hurting the less prestigious and rural Ontario universities like Laurentian. I expect Windsor, Algoma, Lakehead and Nipissing will also be struggling.

I‘m not sure what the Provincial government is supposed to do to help. They already subsidize a good portion of each Ontarian student‘s tuition. Should Queen’s Park now cover the spread until the international student’s return?
 
My two teens are starting university this Sept. From the in-person (pre-shutdown) fairs and campus tours we attended in 2019 and early 2020 I’d say the lack of international students is really hurting the less prestigious and rural Ontario universities like Laurentian. I expect Windsor, Algoma, Lakehead and Nipissing will also be struggling.

I‘m not sure what the Provincial government is supposed to do to help. They already subsidize a good portion of each Ontarian student‘s tuition. Should Queen’s Park now cover the spread until the international student’s return?

Colleges in the GTA are likely no better off. Centennial and Seneca are a haven for international students.

With everything going on their bottom line is likely impacted.
 
Colleges in the GTA are likely no better off. Centennial and Seneca are a haven for international students.
My thought was that with the economic hit of Covid that many GTA families would be sending their kids to the cheaper local college system, thus causing a boost in enrollment.
 
My two teens are starting university this Sept. From the in-person (pre-shutdown) fairs and campus tours we attended in 2019 and early 2020 I’d say the lack of international students is really hurting the less prestigious and rural Ontario universities like Laurentian. I expect Windsor, Algoma, Lakehead and Nipissing will also be struggling.

I‘m not sure what the Provincial government is supposed to do to help. They already subsidize a good portion of each Ontarian student‘s tuition. Should Queen’s Park now cover the spread until the international student’s return?

They are struggling, but my reading on this is that Laurentian had a special kind of stupid both running their finances and a board that probably knew what was happening but looked the other way, hoping it would all fix itself somehow. They had basically let the school go into an almost payday loan trap by 2010; using one years government grants to pay off their line of credit balance run up with the previous year's operating expenses, and they were stuck in that cycle through 2019, carefully managing it so that as long as nothing upset the balance they could pay off the principal, though not all the interest. Then something did upset the balance and it blew up spectacularly. I don't think (I hope) any other schools have gone that far off the deep end. What Laurentian was doing was way out of bounds, and would invite shareholder lawsuits at a private business. There's no way the Board didn't at least have an idea how their money problems always seemed to magically get resolved "somehow" each year, just in time.
 
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They are struggling, but my reading on this is that Laurentian had a special kind of stupid both running their finances and a board that probably knew what was happening but looked the other way, hoping it would all fix itself somehow. They had basically let the school go into an almost payday loan trap by 2010; using one years government grants to pay off their line of credit balance run up with the previous year's operating expenses, and they were stuck in that cycle through 2019, carefully managing it so that as long as nothing upset the balance they could pay off the principal, though not all the interest. Then something did upset the balance and it blew up spectacularly. I don't think (I hope) any other schools have gone that far off the deep end. What Laurentian was doing was way out of bounds, and would invite shareholder lawsuits at a private business. There's no way the Board didn't at least have an idea how their money problems always seemed to magically get resolved "somehow" each year, just in time.
Wow. And I was wrong about the reliance on international students, https://www.macleans.ca/education/which-canadian-universities-have-the-most-international-students/ Laurentian is one of the lowest on this scale. So, where did the students go? Covid closed the in-person classes, but online classes should still be on.
 
Although the numbers are a little different depending on who you read, it seems that about 70 programs are being cut, which affects approximately 600 students (about 10%). Although they are undoubtedly not equally distributed, that seems like a very small per-program uptake. Perhaps one of the questions should be whether the an an all-singing-all-dancing institution can be justified in every community.
 
Although the numbers are a little different depending on who you read, it seems that about 70 programs are being cut, which affects approximately 600 students (about 10%). Although they are undoubtedly not equally distributed, that seems like a very small per-program uptake. Perhaps one of the questions should be whether the an an all-singing-all-dancing institution can be justified in every community.

Lets look at the details list of programs being cut, shall we?

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From: https://northernontario.ctvnews.ca/...ogram-cuts-at-laurentian-university-1.5384348
 
Wow. And I was wrong about the reliance on international students, https://www.macleans.ca/education/which-canadian-universities-have-the-most-international-students/ Laurentian is one of the lowest on this scale. So, where did the students go? Covid closed the in-person classes, but online classes should still be on.
If I was graduating high school, I would wait till in-person classes resumed before applying to post-secondary.
That much money to do a zoom class isn't value for the money in my mind.
 
If I was graduating high school, I would wait till in-person classes resumed before applying to post-secondary.
That much money to do a zoom class isn't value for the money in my mind.
I would try and do some MOOCs and things like Skillshare in the mean time to study interests/general skills.

My post-secondary experience would have been very different if I had had youtube or some of these learning services available to plug gaps.
 

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