‘Is this truly the right thing to do?’: The KFA pushes back on layoff notices KPU issued to 70 faculty members

In an email sent out to Kwantlen Polytechnic University students in March, President Alan Davis announced layoffs in two major faculties where the decline in international student enrolment reduced the demand for specific programs and courses.

The layoffs of about 70 faculty members — 55 in the Melville School of Business and 13 in the Faculty of Arts for the fall 2025 term — are “necessary,” Davis wrote in the email, adding the university has been exploring various options to mitigate the decline in enrolment.

In January last year, then-immigration minister Marc Miller announced a cap on international students that would reduce their intake by 35 per cent over the next two years.

The cap does not apply to master’s and doctoral students nor people looking for study permit applications at elementary and secondary-school levels.

The announcements were followed by curbs, such as increasing the amount of money students need to have in their bank account to get a study permit to $20,635 — not including tuition — from the previous amount of $10,000 to keep up with the rising cost of living in Canada.

In September, the Liberal government announced another 10-per-cent cap on study permits, this time including master’s and doctoral students. The cap is expected to result in 300,000 fewer permits over the next three years.

At KPU, the curbs resulted in the decline of 2,000 international students last year and are expected to fall by 1,500 in the year ahead, Davis noted in his email announcement to students.

Affected faculty members at KPU were notified in mid-March that they are to be laid off. This move prompted a five-month notice, which includes a layoff adjustment period where the university is working with the Kwantlen Faculty Association (KFA) to minimize the number of layoffs that go into effect, Davis wrote in an email to the Vancouver Sun.

At a KPU board of governors meeting on March 26, which over 140 faculty members attended, the board approved the draft 2025-26 fiscal year budget. Among the approaches the budget outlined was “adjusting faculty levels” to be in line with the decline in enrolment. In addition to this, the budget includes other reduction targets, employee retirement incentive plans, and collective agreement and salary increases, among other items.

After some members at the board meeting questioned the risks of not passing the budget on March 26, a motion was proposed to table the budget to the next board meeting. 

“I will urge, since we have debated it, that we vote against this tabling motion and get on with the job,” Davis said. 

The motion to defer the budget to the next board meeting on May 28 failed. 

The budget also noted a $12.1-million drop in net revenue in addition to an almost $49-million decrease in international student tuition fees. In fiscal year 2024, international student tuition revenue amounted to 43 per cent — almost $119 million — of the university’s total revenue. This fiscal year, KPU will face a 41-per-cent decline in this revenue, receiving only $70 million in international student tuition.

In an interview with The Runner, Vice-President Administration Peter Smailes, who is also KPU’s acting chief financial officer (CFO), said in addition to faculty layoffs, the university is planning to reduce the BC General Employees’ Union (BCGEU) and administrative positions and salaries by $5 million this year through a review of all positions, in which only critical positions will be rehired. 

“We will be looking at reducing our budgets across the entire university to make sure that we’re addressing and getting our structural deficit in line,” he said.

Under the budget, spending on faculty salaries will drop by four per cent, while salaries for administration at KPU will go up by eight per cent. The faculty layoffs as well as employee retirements will save the university an estimated $6.3 million, the draft budget noted.

The university is projecting a surplus of $5.7 million for the 2024-25 fiscal year, which could likely be $3 million based on a Jan. 31 review of the budget, Smailes said during the March 26 board meeting.

During the meeting, KFA President Mark Diotte presented a letter to the board from concerned faculty members showcasing alternative budget proposals to protect faculty jobs.

“We ask the Board to send the budget back for amendments that do not include faculty layoffs,” the letter read.

“In media interviews, senior administrators have claimed the faculty only teach and that you can’t teach empty classrooms, but those same administrators signed a collective agreement that details a vast scope of faculty responsibilities, far beyond classroom instruction,” Diotte said during the board meeting.

He added that faculty are responsible for program development, governance, accreditation, and quality assurance; community advisory boards, consultation, and partnerships; curriculum innovation; student support, recruitment, assessment, and placement, and more.

“These are not side activities,” Diotte added during the meeting. 

Notices informing some instructors that programs and courses were getting cut were sent out prior to the board’s approval of the budget and layoffs, increasing tensions surrounding the budget. 

In an email statement to The Runner, British Columbia Federation of Students (BCFS) Secretary-Treasurer Cole Reinbold wrote that post-secondary institutions in B.C. are facing crises like layoffs after relying on international student tuition, which is due to a steady decline in core funding from the provincial government. 

“What’s happening at KPU reflects a much bigger problem across BC. Layoffs aren’t just [numbers] on a budget sheet; they’re a blow to local economies and to the quality of education students receive,” they wrote. 

The solution to this crisis, Reinbold wrote, is reliable and stable operation funding from the provincial government as opposed to institutions relying on international student tuition as a primary source of funding. 

“Quite simply, a world-class education system cannot be built on a model that treats international students as cash cows,” they wrote.  

While there was no legal requirement for the board to approve the budget on March 26, Diotte said voting members should ask for more information instead of voting with “half the picture.”

During the meeting, faculty board member Lyndsay Passmore said she felt “time pressured” to approve the budget as a board member “without full information, which [happened at] not just this meeting.” 

Diotte also raised questions, like using the deferred funding or imposing an administrative hiring freeze to protect faculty jobs, adding that courses with high student enrolment and demand are also being cut.

Smailes said the deferred funding is money the university deferred last year with approval from the province and cannot be used for ongoing salaries for staff and faculty members.

“Ask yourself with clarity and sincerity, is this truly the right thing to do?” Diotte said.

Carlos Sandoval, a faculty member in the sociology department who received a layoff notice, said faculty members are filing an appeal to the board to make it aware that “there are real impacts associated with these decisions.”

“I’m still in shock,” Sandoval said to the board. “I’m still trying to process [this]. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

Sandoval also read from the letter addressed to the board from concerned KPU instructors, which he said was signed by 263 faculty members. The letter noted there are increases in salary expenses for administrators, in contrast to cuts for faculty members.

“Indeed, the faculty layoff process has already been implemented, prior to the budget receiving Board approval,” the letter read. “Laying off faculty is a choice, not a given.”

Sandoval also said many faculty members are the sole bread winners in their families and eliminating faculty jobs does not align with Canadian efforts to bring the country together in the face of uncertain decisions across the border.

“Make no mistake,” Diotte said, “this is a life-changing decision for approximately 70 people — teachers, parents, colleagues, and community members who are deciding right now whether they may have to sell their homes and whether they can remain in Canada.”

Sandoval noted that many laid off faculty members are women, people of colour, and Indigenous Peoples.

“It breaks my heart. I finally felt that I had some job security,” Sandoval said. “I was very happy when I was regularized last year — that’s why I chose KPU for job security. I’ve been working hard because teaching is my passion.”

Sandoval added that the decision to lay off faculty renders the university “unethical, untrustworthy, and unviable.”

In an email statement to The Runner, Laurie Clancy, vice-president human resources at KPU, wrote that after receiving the layoff notices, the institution will explore mitigation strategies, adding that notices may be rescinded between now and Sept. 1 — when the layoffs will take effect.

The faculty who are laid off will be on recall for two years and can be recalled and reappointed fully or partially in case of vacancies in the two-year period post-layoff.

Clancy added the final numbers of faculty to be laid off in September might be fewer than 70.

During the board meeting, Davis said he thinks KPU is “well positioned to come out of this without too much damage.”

“We’re trying to find a middle way here to achieve the overall benefit, both to our students and to the community,” Davis said during the board meeting. 

Early warning bells

In the 2022-23 academic year, international students made up 40 per cent of the student body and were the largest contributors to KPU’s revenue. 

Faculty at the university argue KPU has known of the potential fallout from an over reliance on international students for a while and had more than enough time to come up with a strategy that didn’t involve sweeping layoffs. 

While the faculty has been told the decline in international student enrolment is unexpected, Diotte said that since 2018, KPU’s audited financial statements have flagged the reliance on international student tuition as the “largest financial risk.”

During the board meeting, Passmore said the board has known things were amiss since 2022, adding that there were huge red flags in 2023. 

“Now [in] March of 2025, I think we had a lot of time to plan changes in our operational budgets in a way that didn’t negatively impact and also ways in which we could have engaged to increase revenues,” she said.  

Diotte said warning signs that KPU’s reliance on international students would become a problem go back as far as 2018 and 2019, when the finance department at the university identified the risk of relying on volatile rather than stable revenue. 

“CFO after CFO flagged this and sounded the alarm,” he said during the board meeting. 

“Today’s situation is not a surprise and it is not the fault of the government. It is an inevitable and foreseeable outcome that has not been addressed. And now this board is being asked to rush a decision online in one closed meeting with minimal public consultation.”

Diotte also said new program ideas to meet enrolment and labour market goals “seem to go nowhere.”

In an email to The Runner, Smailes wrote that the risk of being too reliant on international student enrolment was identified in 2019. At the time, course offerings were reduced and class sizes were increased. 

Alternative options

A decrease in course offerings gives students fewer options for scheduling their courses at the time of enrolment, and may result in some students taking longer to finish their programs. 

Diane Walsh, KFA vice-president grievances, said this will make KPU less attractive to potential students, adding that there is room for smaller class sizes without having to give up course sections.

“We can figure out what the sweet spot is for the enrolment caps so that those sections are still available for students,” Walsh said. “[That way] people are not forced into making crazy decisions about how they’re going to fill their schedule.”

In an email to The Runner, Smailes wrote KPU already has one of the smallest class

size maximums in Canada and that adding more would not fix the deficit from low international student enrolment. He adds that while instructors do more than just teach, it is their primary responsibility. 

At the March 26 board meeting, Diotte said that cuts to faculty and programs at first sight of financial difficulty is a concerning trend and not in the best long-term interests of the university. 

“Here at KPU, the first response to a financial challenge is to cut faculty — people responsible for the core mission of the university,” Diotte said to the board. “Meanwhile, administrative spending grows. Does that sound like the right thing to do?” 

The KFA published data from the Human Resources Data Base, the Post-Secondary Employers Association, and KPU’s annual accountability plans and reports, which showed a 76-per-cent increase in full-time administrative university staff from 2017 to 2024, while full-time faculty and student numbers went up 14 per cent and 19 per cent respectively. 

The KFA also noted that data showed KPU has a faculty-to-administrative ratio of about one administrator for almost every three faculty members, which is lower than Langara College but higher than post-secondaries like Capilano University, Douglas College, and the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT). 

As a result, the KFA said if layoffs are needed, they should have begun with administrative staff. 

KPU attributes the increase in administrative staff to student support and initiatives, including faculty support, implemented over the time period. Smailes wrote in an email to The Runner that full-time administrative staff grew from 11 per cent to 14 per cent of all university employees, adding that this distinction is important. 

“A calculation method that discards an important group of employees from consideration will limit the ability to assess changes within the context of the whole university,” he wrote. 

Walsh said KPU told the KFA it froze hiring on half of its vacant positions set to come out of a $10-million fund intended for that purpose, and that this surplus amount cannot go toward saving faculty jobs. 

KPU executive salaries have also raised eyebrows at the university as faculty layoffs come into effect in a few months.

Davis, who advocated in the board meeting to pass the budget, received a total compensation of $280,122 during the 2023-24 fiscal year. In 2022-23, his overall pay was $279,744 and in 2021-22 it was $286,596.

KPU Communities Trust CEO Jaret Lang received $366,062 in salary in 2024, more than any KPU executive. Lang’s salary was based on a recommendation by a third-party consultant hired by the KPU Communities Trust Board. 

The KPU Communities Trust was set up three years ago as a step to broaden the university’s revenue sources by unlocking revenue-generating potential from its land. It received a loan from KPU to establish the trust to be paid back in 2027. 

Lang said all of its expenses come from this loan, however, higher costs related to the trust resulted in a partial offset of funds not transferred to the KPU Foundation, which supports financial awards for students.

One of the missions of the trust is to find alternative sources of revenue for the university to get KPU through periods of volatility, like the one it is in now. 

After three years, the trust is still ongoing with the set up of revenue-generating projects, with none formally completed. 

“I don’t want to overpromise and underdeliver,” Lang said. “But with any luck, by the end of this year, we will have confirmation from the province on the land, and that will allow us to start moving really forward with a lot of those development activities.”