Federation of CEGEPs calls on Quebec to invest in colleges
Posted August 28, 2025 8:10 am.
As CEGEPs welcome a record number of students this fall, their federation is calling on Quebec to reverse the budget cuts demanded of institutions.
According to preliminary data from the Fédération des cégeps, nearly 194,000 students are enrolled for the fall semester in one of Quebec’s 48 CEGEPs—an “unprecedented” number.
The Fédération des cégeps considers this “excellent news for Quebec,” but it presents “significant challenges” for many institutions.
It points out that CEGEPs are facing a freeze on staff recruitment, which does not provide direct services to students, a lack of space, and obsolete infrastructure.
In this context, she maintains that the funding allocated by Quebec to colleges in 2025, up 0.3 per cent, remains “well below what is needed.”
“Our CEGEPs are ready to do even more for Quebec, but they need the necessary resources to fully fulfill their mission,” stated Marie Montpetit, President and CEO of the Fédération des cégeps, in a press release.
“The government must reinvest in CEGEPs, as it did for the school system,” she stated.
At the elementary and secondary levels, Quebec announced budget cuts of $570 million last June, before backtracking and announcing a reinvestment of $530 million.
However, this was not the case at the college level, where the $151 million budget cuts announced in June were not changed.
The Fédération des cégeps (CEGEP Federation) maintains that it will continue its representations to the government so that institutions “have the necessary resources to fully fulfill their mission.”
A petition denouncing the budget cuts imposed on the CEGEP network has so far collected some 4,000 signatures on the National Assembly’s website.
In a press release published a few days before the start of the school year, Minister of Higher Education Pascale Déry emphasized that CEGEPs have accumulated surpluses in recent years, so they will be able to use some of them to “mitigate this period of change.”
“As always, we will continue to work tirelessly to support each institution during this period of adaptation by demonstrating flexibility,” she assured.
The CSN, the CSQ, and their respective federations also called on the Legault government to reverse the cuts demanded of CEGEPs.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
