Selkirk College will close its learning centres in Kaslo and Nakusp this year.
The closures are a result of recent federal restrictions on international student recruitment, which have led to a loss of $9 million in revenue for the 2025-26 fiscal year.
“While this decision wasn’t made lightly, it’s part of a larger plan to ensure Selkirk College remains financial sustainable and continues to serve our region for generations to come,” said Selkirk College president Maggie Matear.
Over the past five years, the Kaslo Learning Centre averaged 12 students, and the Nakusp centre had 13 students, in academic upgrading and development programs. The college has also delivered some short-term continuing education programs in the communities.
The Kaslo centre will close on June 30 and the Nakusp centre on Dec. 31. Each centre has four part-time employees.
Asked about the employment future of those staff members, Matear said, "We don't know at this at this point, because we have union agreements. We're working really closely with the unions and the people impacted to see what the outcome of that is going to be."
Selkirk College workers at the centres are represented by the B.C. General Employees Union, and the Public and Private Workers of Canada, neither of which responded to the Nelson Star's request for comment.
Matear said the college may continue to offer programs in the two communities, but this would be online learning that does not require a physical location. The operating costs of both buildings has been more than $500,000 per year.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada announced in the fall of 2024 that it would cut annual study permits nationwide in 2025 by a further 10 per cent, following a 35 per-cent reduction that began in 2024.
There are about 800 international students at Selkirk at the moment, and by September of 2026 that number will drop to 200, Matear said.
This has implications not just for the students and the college, but for the community as a whole, because of the area's aging population, she said.
"If we are going to continue to have a vibrant economy in this region, we need young people coming in. We need young people who are going to take these jobs. We have an economy that's based on hospitality and tourism to a large extent, and now we are going to be graduating several hundred fewer people every year into those jobs."
Matear said the college has stopped accepting applications for programs that have been mostly populated by international students. This includes post-graduate diploma programs in accounting, business management, culinary management, full-stack web development, gerontological nursing, and hospitality management.
Asked if other programs will be cut and what the criteria would be, Matear said courses with low enrolment are always susceptible.
"Program suspension is something that colleges do regularly if enrolment drops below a certain level."
To date, as a result of the new federal government policy, there has been a reduction of 41.8 full-time equivalent employees at the college, according to a Selkirk College news release. Asked to express this in numbers of full-time and part-time employees, a college spokesperson was unable to do so.
Matear said there will be further job cuts in the near future as international students graduate out of their programs.
"We're doing everything we can to try to minimize that, by looking for early retirements, voluntary reductions, not back-filling positions that are open. But we anticipate, yes, later this year, there will be another announcement of workforce reductions."
Colleges are lobbying the provincial governments for financial support and the federal government for changes in its international student policy, which it implemented too quickly, she said.
"There's a lot of advocacy going on, particularly with the federal government, who made these changes without consultation and painted everybody with the same brush."
The B.C. Federation of Students thinks the crisis faced by Selkirk and other B.C. colleges is a result of a faulty funding model.
"Years of provincial underfunding of post-secondary institutions have forced them to rely on international student tuition to survive," said the federation's secretary-treasurer Cole Reinbold.
"This is a volatile and unsustainable funding model, and the moment these enrolments dip even slightly, institutions find themselves in a crisis. We are seeing the consequences in real time here."
