‘Now the classes are empty’: Fanshawe to leave its south London campus as international enrollment drops

Fanshawe College is relocating all programs from the London South Campus. Bryan Bicknell reports.

It’s a school day at the Fanshawe College South London campus, but you wouldn’t know it. The parking lot is nearly empty, and there are practically no comings and goings.

Manthan Mali, the only student to enter the campus after lunch on Monday, said the student body has thinned out substantially.

“Probably around 200 I guess - before it was completely packed, now the classes are empty,” he exclaimed.

Mali, from India, is in his final year of the Business and Information Systems Architecture program. He’s among the few remaining students to study at the Wellington Road South campus. Fanshawe has confirmed it’s relocating all academic programs at the site to the main campus on Oxford Street East and the Simcoe-Norfolk regional campus.

While Mali wraps up his program next month, he believes it will be a positive move for those still enrolled.

“So, it might be a better opportunity for the students that they don’t have to commute to the south end of the city. Because I travel from east end of the city over here. So it was quite disturbing for me as well. But now they’re moving to the main campus, so that’s probably good for them,” he said.

According to Fanshawe College, the following academic programs will be impacted:

• Agri-Business Management – offered only at Simcoe/Norfolk Regional Campus.
• Business and Information Systems Architecture – offered at London Campus.
• Health Care Administration Management – offered at London Campus.
• Information Technology Infrastructure – offered at London Campus.

Fanshawe says the decision to close the campus is a cost-saving move, as the school tackles a deficit brought on by a 53 per cent decline in international enrollment in one year.

“It’s really all part of the college’s wider efforts to be able to optimize and to consolidate all of our spaces as much as possible in order to address some of the financial challenges that the college is facing right now,” explained Silvana Macdonald, Fanshawe’s Dean of Faculty of Business and Hospitality.

Mark Feltham, the president of OPSEU Local 110, which represents faculty, said it’s not clear how many positions will be affected- at least in the longer term.

“I’m given to believe that all of the people who have jobs are simply moving. I’m also given to believe that a lot of those programs are probably in a precarious position. Right, because that location, as I said, was mostly serving international students, and a lot of those students now are gone,” Feltham said.

The relocation of academic programs takes effect September 1.