An Update on SFU’s Budget and Finance Issues
July 10, 2025
Previously, I’ve written about SFU’s budget and finances and hoped to give you a solid update in this column, given SFU’s ongoing, dismal narrative about its finances. Recently, however, I learned from SFU representatives that the University’s consolidated financials for fiscal year 2025 won’t be available until the end of August. Now, just to ease any concerns you may have, the unavailability of these documents until later in the summer is due to a B.C. government directive and not a decision made in-house. I have received written confirmation of the B.C. government’s directive.
That noted, I wanted to reassure you that my team and your APSA board remain very alert to the state of SFU’s finances and SFU’s narrative around its budget. I hope to have more for you once we’re able to analyze SFU’s consolidated financials later in the summer. For now, I wanted to note a few areas of concern we have identified to SFU ‘s senior administration regarding its finances.
You may be aware, for example, that President Joy Johnson had a June 17, 2025 media interview in which one of the online headlines was “More layoffs likely as international student admissions drop, SFU president says.” An unnerving caption, to say the least, which many of you seemed to have noticed given the concerned feedback provided to my team and APSA board members.
This week in a meeting with the senior administration, APSA’s president, Ben Boyle (see also Ben's message in this newsletter), let President Johnson know how her statement provoked anxiety among many APSA members like you.
President Johnson did confirm that SFU has no plans for further layoffs and that the message had a political purpose to signal to various levels of government that the financial stability of post-secondary education is grim. While that appears to have been the strategy, we requested that APSA be advised of the motivation for such statements from SFU prior to their release, so that members like you won’t be unnecessarily panicked. Our request appeared to be well-received.
Now, while SFU representatives have consistently said that there are no centralized plans for mass layoffs such as those that occurred last year, layoffs are still continuing, albeit at a slower rate. Another way of saying this is that while layoff plans haven’t been centralized at SFU, budget cuts to departments are leading to decisions to position eliminate staff members (APSA and CUPE, for example) at the departmental level. We are approaching 100 APSA members who have lost their jobs in the last two fiscal years.
We also pointed out to SFU’s senior administration that SFU’s Academic Plan (2025-2030) includes a 5% increase to the budget to hire faculty. During a time of fiscal restraint in which many staff have lost their jobs or feel threatened that they may lose their jobs, this seems, as my British father used to say of many of life’s curiosities, “a little rich.”
President Johnson assured us that community feedback can still be provided to the University about its academic plan. Below, you’ll find the email address to write to the Administration if you have concerns about the Academic Plan. The bolding and underlining are my own.
"Members of the university community were invited to share input on the draft SFU Academic Plan via a feedback survey by June 4, 2025. While the survey is now closed, feedback by email remains open at this time to the Office of the Provost and Vice-President, Academic at meholmes@sfu.ca."
APSA hopes to provide further feedback to the University about the Academic Plan and welcomes any comments that you’d like us to provide to the University anonymously. You may contact me at aboden@apsacentral.ca.