Montreal College Students Demand Answers as Provincial Permit Suspension Leaves Hundreds in Limbo

More than a hundred students, many of them from abroad, gathered outside a shuttered Montreal college this past weekend, demanding the province find a way to let them finish degrees that were suddenly pulled out from under them.

The protest targeted the Collège supérieur de Montréal, one of four private colleges across Quebec whose operating permits were not renewed by the provincial government. The closures also affected the school’s sister campus, the Collège supérieur de Sherbrooke, leaving several hundred international students in the lurch after both institutions shut down abruptly.

For many, the timing could hardly have been worse. One student from Algeria, Ouazar Ghenima, had only an exam and an internship left before completing her program to become a medical secretary. She described the whiplash of the announcement, saying students had already been making plans for life after graduation when everything came to a halt.

Demonstrators marched from the college to the offices of Quebec’s immigration ministry, where they pressed the government to automatically place them in a new school so they could complete their studies. For the many international students enrolled at these institutions, the stakes go well beyond academics their legal status in Canada is directly tied to their enrollment.

Protest organizer Ayoub Maouini laid out the bureaucratic bind students now find themselves in: a study permit requires a Quebec Acceptance Certificate, and that certificate requires proof of admission to a school something that, for the moment, doesn’t exist for them. With permits set to expire in the coming months, and for some students in as little as two weeks, the pressure to find a new academic home is mounting fast.

The disruption has rippled beyond students who were close to finishing. Two students from Algeria, Leila Betatache and Feyrouz Chiheb, had enrolled in a second degree at the Sherbrooke campus just a day before its permit was revoked, and are now trying to salvage credits they’d barely begun earning.

Quebec’s Education Ministry has offered little explanation for the decision. A ministry spokesperson said only that the move was made in keeping with the province’s private education laws, without elaborating further on what specifically triggered the non-renewal. According to the ministry, the colleges were formally notified on June 30 that their permits would not be renewed, though they had received earlier warnings between late March and early May that the outcome was possible. A ministry spokesperson had earlier indicated the college had come up short on certain regulatory requirements, without specifying which ones.

The province’s immigration ministry, for its part, confirmed that affected international students will have to file fresh applications to preserve their status in Canada, though it said those applications would be handled with the circumstances in mind.

For students like Ghenima, that offers little comfort in the short term. With graduation plans stalled and immigration paperwork now uncertain, many say they’re left simply waiting to see what the province decides next while trying to hold on to years of work they fear could vanish along with their school’s permit.