By Dan Laxer
The Suburban

Concordia University has seen a concerning decrease in winter registrations, even as it deals with financial woes not unlike those at McGill.

McGill discussed its budgetary problems with the student body in a virtual town hall in which it mentioned other Canadian universities, Concordia included, that are dealing with large deficits.

In an email to The Suburban, Concordia spokesperson Vannina Maestracci says the university has been faced with deficits since the spring of 2023 (when they posted a deficit of $15 million). “The approved deficit for 2024-2025,” she said, “is $34.5 million, and we have been focused on reducing costs and stabilizing enrolment so that we can return to a balanced budget in 2028-2029.”

The drop in applications is worrying since Concordia has been working on recruiting 1,000 new students for the next academic year, specifically to deal with declining enrolment.

Like McGill, Concordia is striving to balance its budget by 2028. Both schools are working with Quebec’s Ministry of Higher Education on a recovery plan. And, like McGill, part of the problem is Quebec’s restrictions on international students, leading to a drop in applications for winter, summer, and fall 2025. New registrations are down five percent for January of this year. This follows some 10-20% application drops last fall.

Student enrolment does account for the bulk of the university’s revenue – 85 percent. But Maestracci points out that enrolment tends to be lower in the winter than in the fall, so it’s hard to say, at this point, how things will turn out in the coming months. But in an budget update in December Provost Anne Whitelaw did point out that the loss from the drop in enrolment affects the three years those students would have spent at Concordia.

Cuts to expenses were inevitable. Some of the measures include adjusting the temperatures in some buildings depending on the hours of operation – turning off heat or air conditioning, and other measures. Last month, while covering a story at Concordia, some journalists from The Suburban noted the “freezing” temperatures in some administration buildings.

And, again, like McGill, Concordia is also in a hiring freeze. Some positions have been closed, and several others have not been filled.

Concordia’s overall operating budget is $665 million. n