Quinte News spoke with the Ontario Minister of Colleges, Universities
Ontario announced on Thursday a total of $6.4 billion in new funding for Ontario’s colleges and universities.
This also includes lifting a seven-year tuition fee freeze and cutting back on the number of student-assistance grants.
The moves are in response to a post-secondary financial crisis, following years of low levels of government funding, stagnant domestic tuition levels since 2019, sharply-reduced numbers of international students and the high tuition fees institutions can charge them.
“Recognizing that the federal government did make some pretty significant changes, repeated changes, to the international student allocations, we understood the pressure that did put our colleges and universities under and that’s why we came forward with this $6.4 billion investment, because we recognize our colleges and universities are essential to what we want to achieve in the province,” Quinn told Quinte News.
Quinn is referencing the decision by the federal government in November 2025 to put a cap on the number of the international students and the allocations allowed for each province and territory.
When discussing the funding formula, Quinn says the ministry has been officially reviewing it for the last six months but that there had been informal discussions about it prior to that.
“I think a big one, especially for Eastern Ontario, because I’m from Eastern Ontario as well, is an extra $284 million for our small, rural, northern and French institutes,” Quinn said.
“We do recognize the smaller the institute, the economies of scale do change, so we want to ensure that they have stability and sustainability for decades to come.”
Quinn was asked what sort of funding Loyalist College would receive.
“It will be a couple weeks before we have some of those finer details nailed down because the weighted grant units and each college has their own mix of courses that they’re offering,” Quinn tells Quinte News.
“So we just want to ensure that we have a very accurate number.”
You can listen to the full interview with Minister Quinn below:
With files from the Canadian Press
