By Anthony Ouellet
External budget pressure still causes headaches for Bishop’s University administration. Rethinking the course offer and program experience are the main ways Bishop’s can overcome an academic funding loss of about three million dollars.
In the past few years, universities in Canada have begun struggling to deal with externally imposed compressions that forced them to engage in budget cuts.
Provincial funding for universities has decreased across many provinces over the last decade, as shown by a report published last December by Universities Canada. According to Bishop’s University administration, not much effort is made by the Quebec government to cover the cost of inflation.
‘’When we renegotiated our collective agreement, as with pretty much everywhere else in the province, we negotiated a wage increase. The indexation [of provincial funding] certainly is not enough to cover the increase in wages, Dr. Kerry Hull, Bishop’s vice-principal of Academic and Research, told The Campus. Additionally, the government began this year cutting ‘’some of the special envelopes that we had for years’’, according to Dr. Hull. For instance, the special funding allocated to education programs was cut by ‘’about 60 per cent’’.
This, however, isn’t news: Bishop’s is on ‘’year three’’ of its effort to deal with these cuts. The university needs to slash about five million dollars before 2029. Of that sum, three million dollars are “on the academic side, Dr. Hull says.
Right now, the university is focusing on how it can reduce the number of courses available to save money, while continuing to provide students with superior quality education. This can bring more interdisciplinarity between departments. For example, ‘’the math department is delivering a course for psychology, and history is delivering a psychology course as well’’.
As the years go on and Bishop’s is forced to continually reduce its course offerings, things are becoming more difficult. ‘’It’s definitely a challenge’’, Dr. Hull admits. In light of Bishop’s and many other universities’ struggles with financial demands, political pressure is mounting in Quebec.
Students who walked on campus in the past few days were greeted by a giant pink poster in the Quad. This poster, an initiative from the Table des partenaires universitaires (TPU), reads ‘’Investing in universities is an investment for everyone in Quebec’’.
The TPU, a coalition of unions, student councils and associations, notably fights for better and more predictable funding for universities in Quebec. It asks all political parties to publicize their plan to fund universities before election day, on Oct. 5, the organization explained in a press release.
What about international students?
Funding formulas aside, one of the biggest financial hits for Bishop’s over recent years is the limitations imposed on the number of international students. In Quebec, for instance, Bill 74, which limited the number of international students permitted into the province, and many federal legislations had a negative impact on the financials of universities such as Bishop’s, as international students bring a lot of money to their reserves.
‘’We don’t know how much the decline will amount to by September, but for now there has been a drop of almost 50 per cent in the number of applications for admission from international students’’, principal Sébastien Lebel-Grenier told La Tribune in April 2025.
While she didn’t have the most recent numbers, Dr. Hull said that the university saw the beginning of a rebound in international students in some programs, but ‘’it is still pretty challenging to recruit’’. The hit on Canada’s reputation, she said, is real and is going to take a long time to fix.
