The mood at the December 6th meeting of Trent University’s Board of Governors was uncharacteristically sombre. 

Governors weren’t laughing as they were presented financial reports which revealed an estimated $12.9 million loss in net tuition revenue for university for the 2024/25 academic year.

According to the reports, which were included in the meeting package and agenda, the loss stems from a significant shortfall in enrolment compared to the previous year’s estimations, with 2024/25 enrolment tracking to be 13,130 full-time equivalents (FTEs), 3.9% less than the planned enrolment of 13,658.

The board’s enrolment projections had been created in anticipation of a 2.9% increase in enrolment, a projection which was ultimately disrupted by the Federal government’s announcement of a 35% reduction in the number of visas to be issued for incoming international students in 2024 in January of this year, which would also see the number of international student visas capped at 360,000 for two years.

Trent University President, Cathy Bruce, began her President’s Report by speaking frankly to Governors about the impacts the international student cap would have on the university with Trent’s November accounts in and Trent’s attention starting to turn to next year’s budget.

“I want to note that in November I sent out a message to all full-time faculty and staff regarding the situation and indicating that there would be no in-year cuts,” Bruce told the Board.

She was quick to add, however, that the university “[has] launched a budget exercise modelling reductions for this coming budget cycle,” and is “[asking] our budget holders to model 2.6% reductions at this time.”

According to VP Communications & Enrollment, Marilyn Burns, “Trent’s postgraduate certificates are really where the highest impacts have been seen.”

Burns attributed this to the fact that “those postgraduate certificates appeal very much to international students.”

While the federal government’s initial announcement only placed caps on international undergraduate visas, further reductions announced in September not only cut the number of study permits to be issued by another 10%, but also extended the measure’s scope to include postgraduate study permits, which had previously been exempt.

“There were a lot of limitations externally applied on all institutions,” Burns told the board.

The university is forecasting that the enrollment reduction for postgraduate certificates may total 7.5%, which Burns said translates to a negative variance of 20.3% in the university’s budget.

While graduate enrolment at Trent continues to grow year-over-year, Burns indicated that it is not doing so at the rate which the university had hoped.

“We had projected higher,” she said, “so that is a negative variance to the budget of 6.4%”

The board financial report notes that the university’s 2024/25 operating budget “conservatively included a provision of $10 million for possible lost international net tuition revenue,” which was set aside after the initial announcement of the international student cap.

Despite these provisions, and another offset of $1.5 million from the Ontario government’s Post-secondary Education Sustainability Funding (PSESF), the university will still see a net loss to overall revenue.

The University is currently projecting an operating deficit of $1.4 million for the year, which the financial report indicates “may be mitigated using prior year appropriations set aside for operating pressures.”

In spite of this fact, the financial report concludes that “The Board-approved budget for 2024/2025 is essentially balanced.”

“You will have likely noticed announcements in the media; Seneca closing their international campus. Colleges are closing programs. Sheridan predicted a loss of 700 positions and employees,” Bruce told the board.

She assured Governors that “Trent is nimble, Trent is responsive, and I am sure we will navigate this well.”

To those who’ve been following Trent’s Board of Governors and the trends in the university’s enrolment year-over-year, these decisions seem the logical conclusion of a concerted shift towards emphasizing perpetually-increasing enrolment numbers and pinning a significant amount of the university’s revenue off international student tuition.

“We are currently about 25% international students, which is fairly responsible,” Provost & VP Academic, Michael Khan, told the Board of Governors on Friday. “We’ve actually grown from 10% to 25% over the last four years.”

It’s understandable, then, that the reduction in international student visa allocations presents such significant impacts to Trent’s budget. While international students make up ¼ of Trent’s student population, international students pay significantly more in tuition fees than domestic in and out-of-province students, meaning they represent an even larger proportion of Trent’s budgeted revenue than the 25% population number would otherwise imply.

“This is a particularly more difficult year,” VP Finance and Administration, Tariq Al-idrissi, acknowledged later in the December 6th meeting, singling out the international student visa cap as one of the significant causes.

Al-idrissi’s comments came as he and Chair Finance and Property, Michael Lavallée, presented governors with a report on the university’s 2025/25 fiscal environment, aiming to highlight areas for improvement and consideration in the development of the coming year’s budget.

“When we look at our budget, we assume things at status quo until they are not,” Al-idrissi said.

Though the confirmation that Trent is facing a financial hit over the international student visa cap would be worrying enough on its own, the news worsened by virtue of having been preceded by more bad news at the Board of Governors’ last meeting.

At that meeting, on October 18th, 2024, it was revealed to the board that Trent had failed to secure the top spot after spending thirteen consecutive years as Maclean’s top-ranked undergraduate university in Ontario in the magazine’s annual national university rankings.

Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, with whom Trent had tied the year previous, instead took the top spot in the “Primarily Undergraduate” category, placing 5th overall in Canada and thereby being the highest placed in Ontario.

While President Bruce was quick to disclaim that “these rankings, they ebb and flow,” it’s hard not to read into the fact that this slip in Trent’s historical standing comes at a time when the university’s modus operandi is beginning to demonstrate cracks in its foundation.

It’s a concern which the Board of Governors seems aware of; if largely unwilling to acknowledge.

While much of the meeting immediately after the presentation of the financial reports consisted of self-congratulating over a number of immediate achievements—the success of the November Open House and Trent’s Giving Tuesday campaign, the unveiling of a new cornerstone at the still-allergic-to-being-renamed Champlain College, and an enthusiastic speech from the recipient of the Board of Governors Scholarship—it all seemed to belie an unspoken recognition of the precarity of Trent’s current place.

Perhaps the keyword here is “sustainability.” Trent prides themselves on that fact—both environmentally and financially. Yet there are serious questions to be raised on both counts by the recent developments both in the university’s budget and investment.

While President Bruce was pleased to report that Trent’s forensics crime scene facility was “the first Canadian building—11th worldwide—to receive the prestigious Zero-Carbon certification from the International Living Future Institute,” and that the Trent Land and Nature Ares Plan had received an honourable mention in the Metropolis Planet Positive awards, the Sustainability and Energy Plan update later in the meeting addressed serious concerns about environmental sustainability policy which Trent has been facing for years.

While presenting the report, Chair Finance and Property Committee, Michael Lavallée, admitted that Trent’s commitment to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing could well draw criticism so long as the university is not fully divested from fossil fuels.

Student groups have been campaigning for the university to divest from fossil fuel spending since at least 2014, with Sustainable Trent making a presentation directly to the Board of Governors about the issue that very year.

The university also held a referendum on divestment, a fact which was explicitly acknowledged at the December 6th meeting when the issue of divestment was noted by Governors “that for students and for a significant number of faculty, [divestment] is a very significant issue,” and that since 2017 a number of Canadian universities have divested from fossil fuels.

When asked whether “without the divestment from fossil fuels, aren’t we actually missing an important component [of ESG]?”, both President Bruce and VP Al-idrissi seemingly downplayed concerns, highlighting instead Trent’s emphasis on the “S” and “G” principles contained within.

Al-idrissi argued that divestment was a “very complex issue,” and “a more complex question than we would have for today’s plan,” prompting Lavallée to express his disagreement.

“I think it would be very hard to separate these two,” Lavallée said. “If we are launching this very impressive plan, and we are still investing in fossil fuels, then there would be a legitimacy question.”

“I think some of the stakeholders on this campus, they would question the sincerity of this plan, and it would be harder to have a buy-in on the parts of students and faculty.”

Shades of this sustainability anxiety are echoed in the Board’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) policy, the three letters of which Chair Nominating & Governance Committee, Valentine Lovekin, compared to “the motto the French Revolution 225 years ago: ‘Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity’.”

One is of course inclined to wonder whether the Board see themselves more as the National Assembly than as the ancient régime in this admittedly strained metaphor, seeing as how the Board (and the upper echelons of Trent’s Staff more broadly) are overwhelmingly White men of a bygone political moment.

As it stands, Trent seems to stand at a number of political and financial crossroads. Should the university continue to steer the course, hoping to weather the storm of the federal visa cap while maintaining investments in fossil fuels and a reliance on international student tuition?

Alternatively, do these new challenges demand new ways of thinking, and in turn new ways of planning, investing, and governance by which to respond.

Ultimately that decision rests outside the hands of students, groups, or faculty, with the Board of Governors. How they decide to forge ahead, however, is as good as anyone’s guess.