Salaries at the top of Ontario’s struggling colleges remained steady last year, according to the Sunshine List, after another bruising 12 months of layoffs and restructuring ended with a potential tuition fee hike and sweeping changes to student loans.

The province’s 24 publicly funded colleges have struggled significantly ever since a federal cap on the number of international students, which made up roughly a third of their revenue, was introduced at the beginning of 2024.

Figures released through mediation last summer estimated some 8,000 staff had been laid off across the sector, with more than 600 programs cut. More colleges have announced voluntary and involuntary layoffs since then.

Despite the thousands of staff who have been shown the door, compensation at the very top of Ontario’s colleges has remained close to half a million dollars for the top five presidents in the province.

Data released through Ontario’s annual salary disclosure, known as the Sunshine List, shows the average pay for presidents of Conestoga, Fleming, Humber, Seneca and Mohawk colleges in 2025 was roughly $507,000 — up around three per cent from the year before.

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John Tibbits, the recently departed president of Conestoga College, topped the list with $601,684 in pay last year. That’s down from the $636,106.70 he earned in 2024, but still substantially higher than $494,716.07 in 2023.

Maureen Adamson of Fleming College earned the second-highest salary of any college president at $512,428. She also recently left her role at the top of the college — her pay jumping 43 per cent in her final year of service.

Humber College’s president pulled in around $497,000 in 2025, while the head of Seneca earned just over $476,000. The president of Mohawk College made $445,166.97 in 2025, the lowest paid of the top five.

Three of the top five presidents also received five-figure taxable benefits, which can include perks like a car allowance, along with their salaries. David Agnew, president of Seneca, had taxable benefits worth $18,094.64

At least four of the five of the colleges run by the highest paid presidents laid off staff in the past 12 months.

Conestoga has been hit with repeated layoffs, including some 400 notices the union said were given to staff in December. Fleming College also announced a round of layoffs expected to impact dozens of staff members in the summer, while Humber College recently announced layoffs after voluntary exits failed to reduce its headcount sufficiently.

Mohawk College laid off tens of staff in a recent round of cuts.

Global News approached all five colleges on Friday; only Humber College responded ahead of publication.

“Executive compensation at Humber, including the President’s salary, is set by the Board of Governors through a transparent process that benchmarks against comparable institutions. These decisions are made independently of day-to-day operational decisions and follow sector standards for accountability and governance,” a spokesperson wrote.

“Like other Ontario institutions, Humber is impacted by the extraordinary budgetary and financial pressures facing the post-secondary sector overall.”

Colleges Ontario also did not respond to a request for comment.

The Sunshine List was first introduced in 1996, with the promise of making it easier for taxpayers to see where some of their money is being spent.

The annual list takes into account total compensation, including overtime or severance payments.

According to the Bank of Canada’s inflation calculator, $100,000 from 1996, when the Sunshine List was launched, is worth north of  $185,017.03 in 2024. About 22,530 names on the list are over that inflationary threshold.

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford is showing no signs of revising his changes to student loans or tuition fees, saying OSAP “is not a freebie anymore” and that “money doesn’t grow on trees” as opposition continues to bubble.

Both the Ontario Liberals and NDP have brought groups of students to the legislature in recent days to protest against the decision to unfreeze tuition fees and move student finance to a majority loan-based system.

“I’ve heard from a lot of students from a messaging me. I appreciate their messages. Some are pretty nasty, but some are very professional,” Ford said on Monday, defending the decision more than a week after it was first announced.

“It’s not a God-given right to take taxpayers’ money. It’s a God-given right to get your college degree and university.”

Frustration with the changes has been simmering since the Ford government first announced them on Feb. 12, allowing colleges and universities to increase tuition by two per cent a year, offering them more government cash and changing how OSAP works.

The latter change is the one that has attracted the most energy, shifting public funding for students from loans to grants.

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The existing proportion of OSAP was about 85 per cent grants to 15 per cent loans, the government said, but starting this fall, students will receive a maximum of 25 per cent of their OSAP funding as grants.

“The changes to OSAP into a primarily loans program will burden the next generation of students with more student debt than ever before,” Adaeze Mbalaja from the Canadian Federation of Students said.

“This decision will jeopardize the financial future of the next workforce of Ontario.”

On Monday, Ford repeated his assertion he supported college and university education — as long as it was in one of the sectors of the economy he views as in-demand, like health care.

“We’re investing in our education, we’re still subsidizing colleges by $7 billion,” he said. “But you’ve got to go out there and if you get an in-demand job, keep in mind we won’t have to pay back the loan for four years, and then six months after you don’t have pay it back. But get an education that you can get a job.”

Students, however, aren’t convinced, pointing to a sputtering economy and high unemployment.

According to figures on the government’s website, unemployment for people aged 15 to 24 sat at 15.6 per cent in December. It was seven per cent for people aged 25 to 54.

“This is all happening during one of the worst youth employment markets in years,” Nicholas Silver, from the University of Toronto’s graduate students’ union, said.

“We are asking our students to take on more debt with fewer opportunities to find stable employment to repay that debt after they graduate. The effects of this will be clear. Due to this uncertainty and risk, fewer students will choose to pursue post-secondary education.”

Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles, whose party brought students to the legislature Monday, echoed the concern.

“Doug Ford’s OSAP cuts couldn’t have come at a worse time for Ontario’s youth,” she said. “Youth unemployment is sky-high, cost of living is out of control, and now this government is making sure that students are buried in thousands of dollars of debt before they can even get their first job.”

Ford pointed out that student grants and loans come from the public purse.

“You are taking tax dollars and you have to be held accountable when you take tax dollars,” he said. “It’s not a freebie anymore. Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford is signalling he will stand firm on his government’s changes to student loans as opposition to a major restructuring of the program grows in the province.

As part of a push to sustain the struggling post-secondary sector, the province will inject new cash into colleges and universities and allow them to raise tuition fees by two per cent a year.

The changes also shifted how OSAP operates, moving away from grants to offer students more loans instead.

The existing proportion of OSAP was about 85 per cent grants to 15 per cent loans, the government said, but starting this fall, students will receive a maximum of 25 per cent of their OSAP funding as grants.

Now, advocates and opponents are pushing the premier to reverse course, accusing him of trying to balance the books on the backs of students.

“Doug Ford has shown that he doesn’t mind a good flip-flop, so we’re going to hand him an opportunity,” Ontario NDP Leader Marit Stiles said.

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“Families that I’m hearing from are furious. Not only is this an attack on students saddling them with massive debt when they least need it … but it is also a hit on our economy.”

The NDP has launched a campaign to “save OSAP,” urging students and families to sign its petition and write to their local MPPs.

“We have been contacted already by thousands of people, thousands of students,” Stiles said. “Even the premier acknowledged he’s getting thousands of calls. No kidding. My phone was lighting up all weekend; I expect every MPP was getting lots of calls.”

Bella Fischer, with the College Student Alliance, said the OSAP changes and hiked tuition fees could put some off college or university by making them pay more for longer.

“They’re putting basically all of the burden onto the students,” she said. “The decisions in life later are going to also be affected because they’re going to have more debt to pay.”

Ford, however, justified the decision at an unrelated event on Wednesday, saying the existing system was “unsustainable” and claiming the government had been “paying for everyone’s education.”

He added, “The most vulnerable are going to be taken care of, that’s clear and simple. It’s going to be 25 per cent — and that puts us in the middle of the pack.”

Ontario Liberal MPP John Fraser said the premier didn’t understand the impact on students.

“He’s out of touch with people’s everyday lives, what families go through to make sure that their kids get an education and are ready for the future,” he said. “They give up a lot.”

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford says he was inundated with calls from students over the weekend, worrying about his government’s decision to raise tuition fees and cut OSAP grants, saying he couldn’t fight against post-secondary leaders any longer.

Last week, the government confirmed it would allow colleges and universities to raise tuition fees by two per cent a year and substantially scale back the grant funding available to students.

At the same time, funding for the sector will increase to roughly $7 billion per year, after thousands of layoffs and hundreds of program cancellations across the post-secondary sector.

“I got a lot of calls from students about OSAP and they were interesting calls, and I returned every one with a standard statement,” Ford told reporters. “It wasn’t hundreds, it was thousands.”

Ford said he had tried to tell students that keeping fees frozen “wasn’t sustainable any longer” and that he had spent years fighting to maintain his freeze.

“I just wish the students knew how hard I fought,” the premier said. “When I first came into office, I knocked the tuition down 10 per cent and under massive pressure from the heads of the colleges and universities, I refused to increase tuition.”

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From September, colleges and universities will be able to increase fees by two per cent annually for the next three years. After that, they will increase by either two per cent or an average of the rate of inflation — whichever is lower.

After fees were frozen by Ford in 2019, colleges and universities increasingly turned to international students to deal with revenue issues, with roughly one-third of total college revenue coming from international students.

When the federal government capped the number of international students at the beginning of 2024, that revenue stream dried up. Colleges, in particular, felt the brunt of it, laying off more than 8,000 staff and closing campuses.

“It’s just not sustainable, and the sector was telling me it’s not sustainable; it would mean closing down colleges and universities,” Ford said. “I think it was accepted by the general public because they’re paying the bills.”

At the same time, the government is also overhauling how student loans and grants work — shifting from offering large grants to an approach which requires students to repay more.

The current proportion is about 85 per cent grants to 15 per cent loans, the government said, but starting this fall, students will receive a maximum of 25 per cent of their OSAP funding as grants.

Ford said he thought that approach might make students work harder.

“I believe that students will focus and be more accountable if they have investments into their education, if their parents have investments in their education, they’re going to focus on it, they aren’t going to drop out,” he said.

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