On February 26, 2024, Ontario earmarked $150 million from a post-secondary funding announcement for commissioning third-party reviews of colleges, producing “Efficiency and Accountability Fund” (EAF) reports.
These reviews were advertised as assessments of how public colleges could “modernize operations” and achieve financial sustainability. In reality, the EAF reports read less like “efficiency” audits and more like a blueprint for privatization.
The reports collectively recommended cutting faculty and support staff, outsourcing public jobs to private contractors, introducing large-scale automation, and, in several cases, merging or consolidating colleges.
Your Divisional Executive has prepared a comprehensive breakdown of what is contained in these reports, and what they indicate for the future of our colleges. You can read the bulletin below.
Solidarity,
Pearline Lung, Local 562, Humber Polytechnic – Chair
Michelle Arbour, Local 125, Lambton College – Vice-Chair
Jeff Brown, Local 556, George Brown Polytechnic
Robert Montgomery, Local 655, Cambrian College
Rebecca Ward, Local 732, Confederation College
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Changes to the Ontario College System
What Faculty Need to Know about the Colleges’ Efficiency and Accountability Fund (EAF) Reports
PDF version of this bulletin is available here.
On February 26, 2024, the Government of Ontario announced over $1.3 billion in funding to the postsecondary sector, with $15 million earmarked as the Efficiency and Accountability Fund (EAF) component for third-party reviews. These reviews were launched by Ontario’s Ministry of Colleges and Universities to assess how public colleges could “modernize operations” and achieve financial sustainability. Most colleges participated in these audits, which were conducted by private consulting firms including KPMG, Deloitte, Nous Group, MNP, EY, and StrategyCorp, with the stated goal of identifying efficiencies and cost-saving measures.
What the consultants actually delivered by extension was a blueprint for restructuring the entire college system. While there are more reports which exist to which we haven’t yet gained access, we have 10 college reports on hand.
The reports collectively recommended cutting staff, outsourcing public jobs to private contractors, introducing large-scale automation, and, in several cases, merging or consolidating colleges. While the Ministry describes the exercise as “efficiency-building,” the cumulative effect points toward a deep transformation of how Ontario colleges are staffed, managed, and governed.
1. Deep Staffing Reductions Across the System
The EAF reports reveal extensive recommendations to “right-size” college workforces, often linking staff reductions directly to increased automation and shared-service models. Notably, the reports make no recommendations for addressing administrative expansion—both in staffing levels and compensation—which has become a significant concern at many colleges. For instance:
- Confederation College: since 2018, management positions have grown from 29 to 47 (62% increase) with salaries increasing on average by 22%.
- Durham College: administrative positions have increased by 38 percent since 2021, while the number of full-time faculty has declined by 10 percent.
- George Brown College: the number of senior management roles above the dean level has doubled since 2020, with some administrative employees receiving annual salary increases of 15 to 25 percent.
- Loyalist College: administrative salaries have risen by 22 to 24 percent over the past two years.
- Ironically, consultants for Loyalist College recommended a 20% overall workforce reduction, including the elimination of all support staff positions tied to recently suspended programs.
- Even so, the administration at Loyalist have taken it a step further, and have reduced full-time faculty thus far by almost 50% since Fall 2024, as well as reducing the number of partial-load contracts by over 50%.
- To manage this dramatic change to faculty staffing, the college has brought in a significant number of precarious part-time faculty.
- Lawrence College: advised to cut as many as 90 full-time faculty jobs, while reducing support staff by 85-95 full-time equivalents (on top of previous cuts of 1/3 of their support staff).
Other colleges—including Boreal, Cambrian, Canadore, Northern, and Lambton—are directed to “right-size” administrative and support teams in line with falling enrollment, replacing many functions with automated systems or shared-service arrangements.
At several colleges, consultants proposed to cut staffing numbers by offering early exit or retirement incentives and not replacing vacancies. In fact, 21 of the 24 colleges have made offers to their faculty since last fall, with the latest coming from Conestoga College voluntary exit incentives being offered to 373 full-time employees – that’s over 50% of their full-time faculty!
In almost every case, staffing reductions are paired with recommendations to increase faculty teaching loads and to reduce complementary hours, meaning less time for faculty to focus on work like course design, research, curriculum development, participation on committees, and program coordination. In some cases, recommendations are also made to replace faculty work with automation.
2. Outsourcing: Public Services for Private Profit
Outsourcing appears throughout the EAF reports as a go-to cost-saving strategy. Colleges are urged to contract out essential services that were once delivered by public-sector staff, and we’ve seen student services (counselling and accessibility services) being targeted.
Humber Polytechnic has eliminated all their faculty Accessibility Consultants, and continues to drag their feet in fully staffing their mental health counsellors (currently only 1 active counsellor on the ground). Conestoga College laid off two counsellors in September 2025 while offering voluntary exit incentives to all remaining full-time counselling and librarian staff. Fanshawe College announced in July 2025 that it is looking to eliminate 14 of 23 personal and accessibility counselling positions, while Durham College, Confederation College, and St. Lawrence College have also eliminated counselling positions.
The outsourcing recommended in the reports is not limited to student services. Durham College is advised to outsource both front-line IT support and on-campus health services to external, lower-cost providers. Lambton College is exploring outsourcing of payroll functions. St. Lawrence College proposes outsourcing everything from marketing and recruitment to counselling services, event management, and even benefits administration. Sault College is encouraged to outsource “lower-value activities,” though the report fails to define what those are.
Other institutions are eyeing the commercialization of campus facilities. St. Lawrence College and Loyalist College both discuss leasing or outsourcing the use of labs, studios, and event spaces to private partners “for a fee.” Similarly, Northern College explores outsourcing an entire campus. These moves would shift more control over student and faculty environments to external vendors, raising concerns about accountability, data privacy, and long-term costs.
3. Automation and Artificial Intelligence on the Rise
Automation is the most consistent recommendation across all EAF reports that we’ve reviewed. Colleges are being directed to digitize or replace human workers with software, particularly in administrative, counselling, and academic planning functions.
Several institutions—including Boréal, Durham, Northern, and Cambrian—are developing new or upgraded student information systems (SIS) that will automate registration, enrollment, and maintenance processes. Fleming College and St. Lawrence College take it a step further, recommending the use of artificial intelligence for program review, librarian services, case management, and counselling triage.
The goal, as stated in multiple reports, is to eliminate manual processes and reduce the need for human staff. Commonly targeted areas include admissions, payroll, scheduling, curriculum design, grading, and student advising.
While framed as “modernization,” these measures would fundamentally change the student experience for the worse—and increase faculty workloads—as technology replaces support roles rather than complementing them.
4. Mergers and Shared-Service Consolidations
The EAF reports also indicate a forthcoming wave of potential college mergers and administrative consolidations, developments that appear to be influenced by initiatives supported through the Skills Development Fund (SDF).
This alignment raises concern that public education funding is being redirected toward private and corporate training interests, undermining the long-term sustainability of Ontario’s public college system. Choices are being made with a political lens that do not support a future for public postsecondary education.
- Lawrence College is explicitly advised to explore merger opportunities with nearby institutions and to share administrative services. The report further calls for the consolidation of its executive team and support staff and the centralization of decision-making.
- Fleming and St. Lawrence Colleges are developing a shared staffing model to reduce administrative duplication, while Cambrian, Northern, Boréal, and Loyalist are encouraged to combine IT and cybersecurity services.
- Durham College is urged to integrate HR, IT, and facilities management with Ontario Tech University, expanding the existing shared-services model.
If implemented, colleges would move toward a hub-and-spoke model where a few large institutions control smaller ones. This would mean students in smaller communities could lose access to local postsecondary options, and smaller campuses could lose autonomy and community connections as operations are centralized under larger institutions.
5. Corporate Training and Microcredentials
Most of the EAF reports recommended an expansion of corporate training (also referred to as contract training or workforce development) and the delivery of microcredentials. Corporate training departments often deliver programming with funds obtained through the SDF. To access these funds, the Colleges must apply as a co-applicant with an industry partner.
These deliveries are generally short term course/program deliveries that meet the needs of the employer and do not allow for social mobility of the student. This work is done—at best—by precarious faculty, but in reality, is taught by people outside the designation of “faculty”. Most often these departments also oversee microcredentials, distance education, OntarioLearn and e-campus Ontario deliveries.
6. Direct Impacts on Faculty and Students
Beneath the language of “efficiency” lies a substantive risk to both educational quality and faculty working conditions. The EAF reports recommend increasing class sizes, merging course sections, and reducing the proportion of “complementary functions” in faculty workloads— measures that expand teaching hours while diminishing the time available for student feedback, curriculum development, and academic advising. When combined with the sector’s ongoing shift toward online and asynchronous delivery models, these changes are likely to further erode the quality of instruction and the overall student learning experience.
Standardized, shared curricula are promoted as “cost savings,” but they can also impede faculty’s academic freedom rights and faculty autonomy in course and program design. In the same vein, cost-savings achieved by the shift toward space-sharing and ‘hoteling’ models intended to optimize facilities has inadvertently reduced workplace cohesion. By removing a sense of personal space and belonging, these arrangements can discourage employees from spending time on site, ultimately diminishing team connectivity and organizational culture.
Expanded Corporate Training departments further erode the quality of education we are working so hard to protect. Most often, these departments operate solely with precarious faculty, “facilitators”, and support staff. Although they enhance industry partnerships, they entrench an alternative funding stream that paves the way for privatization, while eroding education as the bedrock for social mobility.
Student supports are facing significant risk. Counselling, academic advising, registrar, and IT services are subject to deep staffing reductions and increasing automation, resulting in longer wait times and fewer opportunities for students to engage directly with qualified personnel. For smaller or rural colleges, the accelerating shift toward hybrid and online delivery further isolates learners who depend on in-person instruction and support services.
Since Fall 2024, more than 600 programs have been cancelled and multiple campus closures, leaving prospective students with fewer programs and campuses through which to pursue their education. These developments—combined with larger class sizes, reduced opportunities for meaningful interaction with faculty and peers, diminished access to student services due to privatization and workforce cuts, and widening equity gaps affecting northern and Francophone communities—pose serious threats to the accessibility and quality of Ontario’s public college system.
7. The Bottom Line: Efficiency at What Cost?
Taken together, the EAF reports read less like efficiency audits and more like a blueprint for privatization. They envision colleges that are centrally located, smaller in staff, bigger in class size, heavily autonomized, and more dependent on private contractors and artificial intelligence.
Faculty and support staff will bear the brunt of these changes through heavier workloads and fewer opportunities for stable employment. Students, meanwhile, will experience more challenges to access to education, larger classes, fewer opportunities for an in-person college experience, and fewer direct services. An entrenched class system is being developed that will remove access to the building blocks required in higher education for the most marginalized of students.
Equally concerning is the lack of transparency. While the majority of Ontario colleges participated in the EAF reviews, most have not released their reports publicly—including Algonquin College, Centennial College, Confederation College, Fanshawe College, George Brown College, Georgian College, and Seneca Polytechnic. Transparency and accountability must remain central as these recommendations move forward.
The changes outlined in the EAF reports represent one of the most serious threats to Ontario’s public college system in its history. As faculty, we are the stewards of academic integrity, educational quality, and equitable access. Now, more than ever, our collective engagement is essential to defending these values. Faculty, support staff, and students must remain proactive, informed, and united. Monitor college board meetings, participate in local union activities, and speak out in your communities. Funding must be addressed, and the impact of these attempts to dismantle the Ontario College system on our communities must be heard and understood. Demand transparency from your college leadership and accountability from the Ford government!
The EAF process may have been designed to identify efficiencies, but together we must ensure that “efficiency” does not come at the expense of access to a quality public education, good jobs for Ontarians, and a sustainable education system that serves our communities.
Our shared commitment, solidarity, and advocacy will determine the future of Ontario’s colleges. United, we can and must protect the public postsecondary system we have built—one that serves communities, empowers learners, and preserves access to quality education for all.