King’s College facing $1.8M deficit as foreign student enrolment drops, costs rise

HALIFAX – The president of University of King’s College says the school needs to change how it operates as it faces a $1.8-million deficit.

If nothing changes, the number of years remaining before the Halifax university runs out of money is in the “single digits,” president Bill Lahey said in an interview Wednesday.

Rising salaries and operating costs have stretched the university budget, and while provincial funding has gone up slightly, it has not kept pace with inflation, Lahey said. “A significant part of our cost escalation over the last number of years is the same increase in the cost of living that everyone else is experiencing.”

And as its costs have risen, the university, which has roughly 1,000 students, has also seen a drop in both domestic and international students in recent years. The two-year cap on international students announced by the federal government in 2024 has made a big dent in the school’s operating budget. 

In 2023, King’s had roughly 45 international students; this academic year it has 15. That drop has led to a decline of about $700,000 in the university’s revenues, Lahey said. “We would still have a difficult situation on our hands, but it would be less challenging than what we currently have.”

In response to the budget constraints, the university has imposed a hiring freeze and frozen Lahey’s salary. It’s also brought in an external adviser to support a school committee on financial stabilization, he said.

King’s is also in talks with Dalhousie University, with which it shares a campus, about joint efforts to increase enrolment and decrease operating costs. “We’re determined to make it better,” Lahey says. 

On Nov. 25, King’s Students’ Union posted on social media that the university was in a “financial emergency” and could run out of savings by the 2026-27 school year. On Wednesday, student union president Ellie Anderson said that information was released during the school’s board of governors meeting, which she had attended.

Lahey, however, rejects the claim that the university is one year away from zero savings. Still, he admits that the current $1.8-million deficit is significant for a small university.

Presented with Lahey’s assertion, Anderson said she would remove that information from the social media post until she can get it confirmed.

Anderson said she published the warning about the university’s finances because she thinks it’s important for students to be aware of what’s happening. Students, she added, are becoming more engaged with the school’s financial situation, including by questioning the planned southeast corner project, a new multi-use building with an estimated $95-million price tag.

“Students are coming to us and asking, ‘Why are we looking at the corner building when we have a resident building that needs to be updated?’”

Construction hasn’t started yet, but Lahey said preliminary work on the project has not come out of the university’s operating budget; instead, the money came from donations and government contributions. But he said the school needs to update its facilities, explaining that as all Canadian schools have fewer international students, there is increased competition to attract domestic students.

Anderson agrees King’s need to attract more Canadian students, but she says she worries about the student experience on campus amid conversations about budget cuts.  

“We have small-sized classes and conversations with professors who are experts in their field, it’s a small and close-knit community. What are the things that make King’s special and how do we keep them?”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 3, 2025.