Humber Slashes Student Services

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Humber Slashes Student Services
Counselling faculty cut by 35% since 2019, to be cut by another 50% by July

On Wednesday, April 23, 2025, Humber Polytechnic issued layoff notices to all faculty working as Accessibility Consultants in Accessible Learning Services. This represents lost employment for 8 people, and the elimination of 11 faculty positions.

The Accessibility Consultants (ACs) work as counsellors under the academic collective agreement, along with faculty providing mental health counselling. The ACs play an essential role in the academic accommodations process, supporting students seeking accommodation and faculty building inclusive learning environments.

In 2019, Humber had 23 full-time counselling faculty. Today, that number is 15, and with these layoffs it will soon go down to 7. This represents a 70% reduction in counselling faculty over the last six years. Humber has refused to fill long-standing vacancies in this area despite repeated appeals. Unfilled vacancies include positions designated for Indigenous and Black counselling faculty.

A 2023 report from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario described caseloads of 300 students or more for this work as “extraordinarily high.” At the time of these layoff notices, our 8 working ACs had caseloads of over 400.

We’ve heard some repeated themes from President Ann Marie Vaughan at Town Halls: Students first. Employees matter. Transparency is a core value. We must now ask, how does this decision align with any of these statements?

• How does eliminating an essential faculty role put students first?
• How does decreasing supports for students align with Humber’s commitments to equity?
• What are Humber’s plans for the remaining counsellors?
• How does laying off a group of faculty from multiple equity-deserving groups—including employees with lived experience of disability—align with Humber’s commitments to equity?

It is this last point that is most disturbing: months after Humber announced its adoption of the social model of disability in ALS, meant to remove barriers to full participation in all aspects of life, it appears to be using this very same model to lay off a group of workers already statistically far less likely to have stable employment.

We call on Humber to publicly address these events, reverse these layoffs, guarantee job security for all counselling faculty, and honour its commitments to students, employees, and the values it purports to uphold.

Sign the petition below to email Humber leaders and the Board of Governors