KPU senate endorses draft budget showing $12.1-million drop in revenue

Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s senate endorsed a draft budget for fiscal year 2025-26, which showed a $12.1-million drop in net revenue, during a meeting on March 3.

Compared to the 2024-25 annual base budget, this draft budget projects an almost $49-million decrease  — or a 41-per-cent decline — in international student tuition fees as well as a $582,000 drop — or two-per-cent decline — in domestic student tuition fees.

Interim Reporting and Budgeting Director Carole Laplante said in fiscal year 2024, international student revenue contributed to 43 per cent of KPU’s total revenue.

“That’s projected to be only 26 per cent of total revenue next year,” Laplante said. “This is equivalent to seeing a 20-per-cent reduction in total revenues in just two years.”

Spending on faculty salaries will drop by four per cent when compared to the fiscal year 2024-25 annual base budget.

“We chose to purposely and carefully adjust staffing levels and the support services, even though we’re forecasting a significant decline in international student revenues,” Laplante said. “This was done intentionally in order to maintain a level of staffing that will be needed to support rebounding growth, but we still need to reduce in order to balance.”

In her presentation to the senate, Associate Vice-President Planning and Accountability Lori McElroy said fiscal year 2025 saw a 25-per-cent year-over-year decrease in international students and an overall 10-per-cent decline in all students in ministry-funded programs, which does not include trades apprenticeship and continuing and professional studies programs.

In fiscal year 2026, she said KPU projects a year-over-year decline of 26 per cent in international students and a 12-per-cent decrease in total students. Domestic students are expected to go from 11,301 in fiscal year 2025 to 10,760 in 2026.

“This year, we ended up filling 14,000 fewer seats by international students than we would have the year before,” McElroy said. “Next year, we’re expecting a further decline of 11,000. So putting that together, that’s 25,000 fewer seats filled by international students. That’s a lot of revenue.”

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) made further changes that will affect the coming year, McElroy said, such as limiting the number of non-degree disciplines eligible for the post-graduation work permit program. At KPU, there are only 26 eligible non-degree programs.

“[Of] all the international students who graduated last year, only 28 per cent were in one of these programs that would be eligible, either a degree or one of the eligible non-degree programs,” McElroy said. “So we expect this to have a negative impact on our demand.”

She said the IRCC also cancelled the student direct stream, which is a faster way to get a study permit for certain countries including India. Another key change expected to further lower international student enrolment is an additional 10-per-cent reduction in study permits on top of the existing 35 per cent.

“The IRCC changes have been reckless and lazy, done for political gain, and have harmed pretty well every part of the higher education sector,” KPU President Alan Davis said.

The budget will be presented for approval to the board of governors on March 26.

The senate also voted to recommend the board of governors approve Policy and Procedure AC16 Academic Title Awards, which introduces professor, associate professor, and assistant professor titles for faculty and academic administrators.

Members of the senate also approved a motion to recognize the private B.C. institution Focus College, effective May 1, with the goal of establishing a transfer pathway to KPU.

“It’s a great way to recruit students who already demonstrated some capability and [can] get fair credit for what they’ve done,” Davis said.

The senate also approved a list of new, revised, and discontinued courses, which will go into effect Sept. 1.

There are a total of seven new courses, which are in the applied communications, English, political studies, history, education, and physics departments. There are also 16 revised courses in English, economics, psychology, and traditional Chinese medicine.

The discontinued courses are both in the economics department: ECON 3450 Intermediate Macroeconomics and ECON 4451 Macroeconomic Policy II.

The senate also approved revisions to the bachelor of science in biology and bachelor of science in health science, which also include the honours programs for both degrees, to reduce the number of courses needed for declaration, as the requirements were “too restrictive,” the meeting agenda read.

Senators also voted in favour of a motion to revise the bachelor of journalism, including the honours program, to provide “more flexibility for students and better laddering between courses.” The science and journalism program changes go into effect on Sept. 1.

The KPU senate also voted to change MATH in five course names to STAT to make clear they are statistics classes. The changes, which go into effect on Sept. 1, affect MATH 1115, MATH 1170, MATH 2315, MATH 2335, and MATH 3315.

The next senate meeting is on March 31 at 4:00 pm through Microsoft Teams. For more information, visit www.kpu.ca/senate.