Mark Kirkpatrick, president of Belleville, Ont., based Loyalist College, says he's seen better times, as budget constraints have forced his school to cut 24 programs, or 30 per cent of all programs offered.

"We've had to make some extremely difficult decisions here at the college," he said.

Loyalist, like many colleges across the province, had relied on tuition from international students to subsidize a lot of the domestic delivery of its programs. But federal policy changes that limited internat…