Case File:<\/strong>\u00a0The Exploited University Decedent:<\/strong>\u00a0Public-interest higher education, universities and public colleges as institutions allegedly devoted to knowledge, civic formation, and social mobility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Known Aliases:<\/strong> The Academy, Higher Ed, Post-Secondary, Your Future Starts Here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next of Kin:<\/strong> Domestic and international students, and the families who went without to send their children into this system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Classification:<\/strong>\u00a0Death by extraction, ethical and financial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first thing noticed about the decedent was not a dignified institution in sudden crisis. It was a body that had been staggering for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At one Ontario college, the Language Studies Department could not agree on something as basic as the length of its own courses. Were they twelve weeks? Thirteen? Fourteen? They were fourteen. This was not a minor misunderstanding: it was an argument. The people paid to design and deliver education were arguing over how long the semester actually was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The same college was hacked, exposing the fragility of its systems. Two professors in the examining officer’s immediate orbit collapsed on the job, one had a heart attack in the office, the other a stroke in front of students. The examining officer personally took over both courses so that the term could limp to the finish line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was Mohawk College in the early 2000s, not a lean, efficient machine, but a living disaster held together by improvisation and overwork. The official histories talk about a rich history and a special mission, but the lived reality was a place that did not know how long a class ran and could not protect the health of the people standing in front of students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point is not to single out one college as uniquely incompetent. It is to establish the condition of the patient before the current financial model locked in:<\/strong> overextended, undercoordinated, and reliant on individual heroics rather than robust structure. When such an institution later decides to plug budget holes with international students and student debt, it is not innovating. It is monetizing chaos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the initial visual inspection, the decedent’s vital signs were assessed. They were alarming, but not in the way the institutions like to present them in glossy annual reports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the United States, the total student loan debt stands at roughly\u00a0$1.78\u20131.84 trillion<\/strong>, depending on the point in 2025 one chooses to measure. Federal loans account for about 92% of that balance, approximately $1.64 trillion, with private loans making up the remainder. Between 42 and 46 million Americans carry federal student loan debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The average federal student loan balance is approximately $41,600 per borrower<\/strong>. Broader estimates that include private loans put total average student debt as high as $42,600. Recent graduates from the Class of 2023 leave with around $29,300 in cumulative debt on average. For many, it will take close to 20 years<\/strong> to pay off these loans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These are not edge cases. They are the default settings of the system. For lower-income families, the numbers are obscene: those in the bottom income quintiles still carry tens of thousands in debt; those in the middle and upper-middle brackets can owe $50,000\u2013$80,000 or more. The message is clear, if you want a credential that might keep you out of poverty, you must first assume a level of risk that would be called predatory in any other sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Canada, the model looks different but rhymes. Domestic undergraduates pay about $7,000 CAD per year<\/strong> on average. International undergraduates pay around $38,000 CAD<\/strong>. International students account for 37% of university tuition revenue<\/strong> and 68% of college tuition revenue<\/strong>, despite representing roughly 30% of enrolment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Ontario, the Auditor General and federal officials have been blunt: public colleges are in a precarious position because they rely on international tuition for the majority of their income. International students are not a nice add-on: they are the\u00a0second heart<\/strong>\u00a0the system surgically installed when the first one, public funding, failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n University revenues in Canada reached approximately $52.4 billion CAD in 2023\u201324<\/strong>, but this relied heavily on international tuition; subsequent federal caps on study permits triggered projected losses of hundreds of millions in Ontario and Quebec alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vital signs conclusion:<\/strong>\u00a0The patient is alive in accounting terms, but only because it is plugged into two life-support lines, student debt and international student cash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The internal examination revealed that the decedent’s organ failure was not caused by a single traumatic blow. It was the cumulative result of three chronic conditions: underfunding and debt as a business model; the cultivation of an international “spouse” for exploitation; and intellectual refusal to adapt to AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The decedent did not die of sudden austerity. It died of slow public starvation and private extraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Governments in both Canada and the United States reduced the proportion of higher education budgets they were willing to cover. Institutions responded not by redesigning themselves, but by raising tuition and expanding enrolment, then handing the bill to the only parties without lobbyists: students and their families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the U.S., this produced a\u00a0$1.7\u20131.8 trillion student-loan complex<\/strong>, with average federal balances above $40,000 and repayment horizons stretching toward two decades. For low-income families, university became a high-stakes speculative bet, sell assets, go without, and hope the credential will someday outweigh the debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Canada, chronic provincial underfunding pushed colleges and universities toward similar behaviour. The Ontario Auditor General has described the province’s public colleges as being in a precarious position, with 68% of their tuition revenue coming from international students paying many times domestic rates. Domestic families may not face American-scale loan balances, but they face a different quiet austerity, years of saving and sacrifice for credentials whose market value is increasingly uncertain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Debt was not a regrettable byproduct. It was the primary business model.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The most striking pathology was the decedent’s relationship with international students. Official rhetoric frames them as “ideal immigrants” and “global talent.” Policy and practice treat them as a captured revenue and labour source.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Canada’s International Education Strategy explicitly targeted hundreds of thousands of international students and billions in expenditures as an economic growth engine<\/strong>, not primarily as an educational mission. Roughly 800,000 international students<\/strong> were in Canada, explicitly recruited to prop up underfunded colleges and universities and to fill cheap labour gaps. International enrolments in Canadian public colleges reached about 289,000 in 2023\u201324<\/strong>, exceeding universities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This dependency became so extreme that minor policy adjustments registered as financial earthquakes. When the federal government moved to cap and then cut international study permits by roughly 35\u201349%, Ontario universities alone forecast $2.1 billion CAD in revenue losses<\/strong> over just a few years, with annual shortfalls rising to $1.1 billion CAD by 2027<\/strong> and cumulative losses of $5.4 billion CAD over five years<\/strong>. The Council of Ontario Universities projects a sector-wide annual deficit of $265 million CAD by 2025\u201326<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The dynamic is precise: you court the student. You shower them with glossy brochures and promises. You tell them they will be part of the family. They move in, only to discover they are there to pay the bills. If they complain, you remind them they do not really belong. And when the neighbours start to notice the bruises, you blame the student for causing problems in the neighbourhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n International students are essential, but institutions have treated them like an imported spouse they can overwork and underprotect while using them as a balance sheet fix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mohawk College’s recent numbers make the relationship painfully clear. When federal changes reduced international study permits, Mohawk’s international enrolment dropped from\u00a07,309 in fall 2023 to 6,166 in fall 2024<\/strong>, a loss of\u00a01,143 students<\/strong>\u00a0in one year. The president warned staff about a\u00a0projected $50 million CAD deficit for 2025\u201326<\/strong>\u00a0and signalled that layoffs were coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sector-wide, a similar story: Seneca College bracing for a $35 million CAD shortfall<\/strong>, multiple other colleges warning of millions in lost revenue due to fewer international recruits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no mystery about what those 1,143 missing students represent. At $20,000\u2013$30,000 CAD per international student in net tuition and fees, each cohort is a line item on the balance sheet. When they cannot get visas or are scared away by policy whiplash, the institution bleeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n AI has altered the conditions of knowledge work. Skills in AI-impacted professions are changing roughly two-thirds faster<\/strong> than before, making static curricula obsolete at unprecedented rates. Major employers in tech and beyond have relaxed or eliminated formal degree requirements, moving toward skills-based hiring. AI-enhanced self-directed learning and high-quality online resources have undercut the monopoly universities once held on advanced knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Institutions’ response has been split and incoherent:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The result: an expensive credential whose content and assessment methods lag the realities of an AI-saturated labour market<\/strong>. A 2025 graduate survey suggests that only about 30% of graduates<\/strong> secure jobs in their field, down from 41% the previous year; nearly half report feeling unprepared for entry-level work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this context, the decedent’s insistence on four-year, high-debt degrees looks less like professional rigour and more like institutional nostalgia. AI did not kill the university. It merely exposed that the university was unwilling to change its own habits while demanding that everyone else adapt around it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rule 1: If students are your primary revenue source, they must also be your primary stakeholders.<\/strong> Rule 2: You cannot call yourself a public good while offloading risk onto the poorest families.<\/strong> Rule 3: An education system that relies on constant inflows of precarious foreign students is not sustainable.<\/strong> Rule 4: Debt is not a business model, it is a delayed crisis.<\/strong> Rule 5: Ignoring AI does not protect you from it.<\/strong> Cause of death:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Manner:<\/strong>\u00a0Voluntary participation in an extraction regime, targeting poor domestic and foreign families as the primary donors while telling them they were being given opportunity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The buildings carry billionaire names. The real donors are the parents skipping meals, the grandparents cashing out savings, the international families selling land or taking on high-interest loans so their child can sit in a fluorescent classroom on the other side of the world. The plaque may say Smith Hall<\/em>, but Smith’s $50 million buys naming rights on top of<\/strong> hundreds of millions squeezed out of students and their families every single year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If a university’s survival depends on extracting everything it can from poor families and foreign students, the university is already dead. The least we can do is stop calling the extraction education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Certified by:<\/em>
Examining Officer:<\/strong>\u00a0Alexandra Kitty
Classification:<\/strong>\u00a0Death by Extraction: Ethical and Financial<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nSECTION I: IDENTIFYING INFORMATION<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nSECTION II: EXTERNAL EXAMINATION: FIRST OBSERVATIONS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nSECTION III: VITAL SIGNS: STUDENT DEBT AND IMPORTED REVENUE<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Student Debt Load: Balancing the Books on the Backs of the Young<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
2. International Student Tuition: Canada<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nSECTION IV: INTERNAL EXAMINATION: STRUCTURAL PATHOLOGIES<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1. Underfunding and Debt as Default Business Model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
2. International Students as the Exploited Spouse<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
3. Case Example: Mohawk’s Missing Students<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
4. Technological Illiteracy: The AI Refusal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\n\n\n\nSECTION V: TOXICOLOGY \u2014 SUBSTANCES DETECTED<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Substance<\/th> Source<\/th> Effect<\/th><\/tr><\/thead> Public underfunding<\/td> National\/provincial\/state budgets<\/td> Structural push toward high tuition and privatization of costs onto students and families<\/td><\/tr> International tuition dependence<\/td> Universities and colleges<\/td> Creation of an indentured student-labour class paying 3\u20135\u00d7 domestic rates<\/td><\/tr> Student loan expansion<\/td> Government, lenders, universities<\/td> $1.78T USD in debt; average balances $41K for U.S. borrowers; delayed life milestones<\/td><\/tr> Immigration-linked program marketing<\/td> Private and public colleges<\/td> Misleading promises; fragile programs that collapse with policy tweaks<\/td><\/tr> Policy whiplash (caps, permit cuts)<\/td> Federal immigration\/education policy<\/td> Sudden revenue shocks; stranded students; universities scrambling with little accountability<\/td><\/tr> Donor capture (vanity naming)<\/td> Billionaires, mid-tier moguls<\/td> Buildings named for donors whose interests misalign with students; public money laundered into private legacy<\/td><\/tr> Tech illiteracy \u2014 AI<\/td> University governance, faculties<\/td> Failure to prepare students for AI-mediated labour market while charging legacy prices<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nSECTION VI: EMPIRICAL RULES THE DECEDENT FAILED<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Instead, students, especially international ones, were treated as ATMs and cheap labour, not as people the institution answers to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When poor families go without basic needs to pay tuition at institutions with questionable return, the “public good” branding becomes a lie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Any policy shock, cap, or diplomatic tension can destabilize finances overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Student debt accumulation at current scales guarantees political backlash and individual hardship; treating it as a permanent revenue stream is a form of institutional self-harm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Selling the same credential at higher prices while ignoring changes in knowledge work is a slower version of the media’s “this internet thing will blow over”<\/em> delusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nSECTION VII: MANNER OF DEATH: FINAL DETERMINATION<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\n\n\n\nSECTION VIII: RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE LIVING<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Alexandra Kitty, Independent Education Examiner<\/strong>
alexandrakitty.com \u2014 The Laboratory<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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