Boston-based Northeastern University announced a plan on Nov. 2 to create a regional campus in Toronto next year.
Proposed as the academic base for a largely-graduate student body, the Northeastern Toronto campus will offer programs focused on the management, information, and medical sectors. The planned curriculum will largely be co-op based and also allow for working professionals to get a degree from the school while still employed, according to a Nov. 2 press release.
Northeastern, a privately-funded school, already has regional campuses in Seattle, San Jose, and Charlotte.
“This initiative is a more intentional approach to taking our educational model around the world,” said Northeastern president Joseph Aoun in a press release. “Toronto’s culture of innovation and increased demand for a highly-skilled workforce make it an excellent partner.”
Toronto mayor John Tory welcomed the satellite campus as a positive addition in a press release on Nov. 3.
There are dozens of satellite campuses of different schools in Canada. Among the largest are University of Toronto’s (U of T) Scarborough and Mississauga campuses, which have more than 10,000 students each.
Some satellite campuses have run into difficulties with providing resources for a smaller student body.
Library services, bookstore and professor office hours, and food services at Trent University’s Oshawa campus all drew the ire of Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) back in 2011. OUSA cited multiple complaints from students that the Oshawa campus was under-serviced in those four categories compared to Trent’s main campus in Peterborough.
Kelly Vanleyden, then-president of the Trent-in-Oshawa Student Association, wrote a letter in 2011 addressing some of the issues at Trent’s Oshawa campus. Vanleyden wrote that while satellite campuses opened up educational access to more people, schools also had to do it “in a way that protects the student experience.”
According to Glen Jones, a U of T professor who studies higher education policy, satellite campuses have become a way for schools to increase enrolment in areas with under-serviced populations or where the market is right.
For example, the University of Guelph (U of G) took over an existing college in Kemptville, Ont. specializing in agriculture and turned it into a satellite campus in 1997. U of G, however, announced plans in 2014 to close the Kemptville campus to save money from rising costs and static enrolment. The school has since received temporary funding from the Ontario government.
Jones said a concern with Northeastern setting up in Toronto is that some Canadians may not trust privately-funded schools.
“Obviously foreign institutions offer programs in Canada so that they can make money, and I therefore assume that those that exist find the climate positive,” Jones said. “Generally speaking, I think that most Canadians have come to view higher education as a public enterprise, and so some may be a little skeptical of foreign or private institutions.”
Jones said foreign universities have been operating in Ontario and across Canada for many decades, though most don’t have a formal campus.
According to statistics from Cross-Border Education Research Team, there have been one Australian and five American universities that have opened up satellite schools in Canada in recent years. Three of the six have closed, with DeVry University’s satellite school, formerly located in Calgary, moving its operations online.
